


Monsters

by LetheSomething



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, Angst, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Dark Comedy, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Gothic, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Lots, M/M, Minor Character Death, Punk, Rare Pairings, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, and i do mean lots, bad band puns, band au i guess, but that kinda goes without saying, hoo boy, of music and movie references, that fic where i stuff everything ànd the kitchen sink in one story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-10 16:19:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 45,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12302925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetheSomething/pseuds/LetheSomething
Summary: Tendou Satori is a sarcastic coffee shop owner with a bad taste in music. Sugawara Koushi is a professional with a penchant for black Colombian coffee. They hit it off, but things don't goquiteas planned.A Vampire Yakuza Coffee shop Gothic Punk AU, mildly paced burn TenSuga fic.Mature rating mostly for gore (the smut is present, but mild).Major thanks toBittersweetorangesandMilksaltfor help in proofreading.Finished!





	1. Coffee shops and bus rides

**Author's Note:**

> The entire plot of this fic can be compared to a roller coaster, in that it starts by building slow, and then it drops into the abyss screaming.  
>  **Side note:** This is a horror story. I know it starts off all cutesy, but there's gonna be a fair amount gore. I won't put up trigger warnings per chapter as usual, but as a warning before you start:  
>  _T/W: gore, blood (so much blood), body horror, transformation horror, violence, murder, dismemberment_

He drinks his coffee black.  
“Sugowaru?” the young barista squints at the paper cup in his hand. “One large straight Suicide Colombian for Sugowaru?”  
“Ah, Sugawara, that's me.” He gets up from his seat and walks over.  
He smiles, gently, radiantly, hazel eyes twinkling from beneath a mop of grey hair, and accepts the cup before retreating to his table.  
He’s been coming in every evening for the last two weeks. He enters at around eight, orders the Colombian and sits in a corner by the window, next to the emergency exit.  
He drinks his coffee black, and he likes Colombian. Tendou Satori knows this much.

Mister Sugawara delicately sips from his cup and looks at the street.  
He always carries a newspaper, though Tendou has never seen him actually read it.  
People watcher, he assumes, though who the guy’s supposed to watch at night, he doesn’t know.  
Maybe the man’s a journalist researching youth culture, a writer looking for a story, a philosopher seeking inspiration on the inherent state of mankind, or maybe he’s just a serial killer hunting for his next victim. That would be just his luck, Tendou thinks.

Sugawara orders three large coffees while he sits there, and usually he leaves at four am, just before the morning crew comes in.  
He looks slightly out of place in this coffee shop, but not enough to rouse suspicion.  
On second thought, he might be an impresario, or some indie band manager, Tendou muses.  
Or he's just a salaryman with no home life.  
Whatever it is, Tendou really, really doesn’t know and it kinda kills him that he can’t figure it out just by looking at the beautiful man currently blowing into his black Colombian.

He wears a tailored suit, finely made if slightly unfashionable. The kind people like to call 'timeless': gray pinstripe and straight pants, with soft soled, immaculately polished black shoes.  
It’s refreshing, to say the least, especially since Tendou’s shop usually attracts a more rugged crowd.  
Mister Sugawara has a presence to him, something calm and unassuming, but at the same time razor sharp and just very obviously _there_.  
Tendou isn’t quite sure what to make of it but he sure as hell wants to be near it.  
He wants to unwrap it and, if at all possible, put his greasy hands all over it.  
His tongue too, if given the chance.

It’s the care, he thinks, the neatness in the way this man sits, sips coffee, the way he dresses, too.  
Mister Sugawara has a few different shirts that Tendou has seen. A clean one every day.  
There's a few gray ones, with prints of leaves and one with birds. There’s at least one crisp white one and a shirt in a weird greenish colour.  
Good fabric. Silk, possibly, or very fine linen. Classy stuff.  
Tendou is intimately familiar with Sugawara's shirts, because he tends to look at them longingly every other evening or so, wondering what's underneath.  
Imagining, also, how that man would whimper or sigh if he put his lips on that delicate, pale skin.

But that’s about all Tendou knows about the mysterious mister Sugawara, because so far he hasn’t worked up the courage to talk to him.  
This is, in itself, a small miracle and something that should probably worry him.  
Tendou does not make it a habit to be bashful and he certainly doesn't care what people think of him, usually.  
According to Kawanishi, that’s his whole _thing_.  
But apparently he cares a lot about what this mister Sugawara might think if he suddenly started chatting him up.  
Kawanishi finds this hilarious.

 

“Goshiki, be a dear and chase the rodents and cockroaches out of the kitchen,” Tendou says loudly, nodding to the three dishes in an otherwise spotless room. “It will be your own personal quest to make you a Man. I’ll keep an eye on the front.”  
“The whole of the front or like that one table,” Kawanishi snorts.  
Tendou looks down his nose at his day manager-slash-friend, who’s perched on a stool by the bar, scrolling through his phone.  
“Why are you still here? Girlfriend kick you out again?” Tendou says, smiling in a way that shows all his teeth.  
“We’re fine, boss. I have tickets for Front 242 tonight, just waiting for her to show up.”  
Tendou whistles. “Spending money on her? What's next, being faithful?”  
“Shut up, Tendou, that was one time.”  
“Mmm hmmm,” Tendou hums and Kawanishi rolls his eyes.  
“Just keep quiet, you ass.”  
As if on cue, a young woman enters the shop and cheerfully lays an arm on Kawanishi’s back.  
“Hey!” she says, waving at Tendou.  
“Hana, don’t you look lovely today,” Tendou intones. “It’s good to see you’re back again. I was getting tired of the sound of Kawanishi's broken heart.”  
He resists the withering glares of his staff member and idly wipes the counter.  
“Thanks for taking care of him, mister Tendou,” the girl smiles back.  
“Crickety crack, crickety crack,” Tendou hums.  
The past few weeks really have been exhausting, with an annoyingly grumpy Kawanishi souring up the place.  
More grumpy than usual. And that’s saying something.  
“Shut up,” Kawanishi says, sliding off the chair and pocketing his phone.  
“Honestly, though, you can do better, darling,” Tendou says, mischievous twinkle in his eye.  
“I swear I will punch you right in your damn mouth one of these days,” Kawanishi grumbles, slinging an arm over his girlfriend’s shoulder.  
“Not if you want to keep your joo-hoob,” Tendou sing-songs.  
“Let’s go,” Hana says, gently tugging her boyfriend along. “Have a good night, mister Tendou!”  
“Yeah yeah, have fun, you lovebirds.”  
The couple walk out and join the line forming in front of the concert hall across the street, Kawanishi never letting his girl out of his grasp while she chats animatedly.  
Tendou smiles and shakes his head, then goes back to wiping tables and thinking of ways to start a conversation with the mysteriously handsome man in the corner by the window.

 

 

The place is called Monster Coffee and it is the self-proclaimed ‘only punk coffee shop in town’.  
The name amuses Sugawara Koushi, even if it's a bit of a stretch.  
The walls are bare brick and the barista’s have ear gauges and piercings and tattoos, but all of that is pretty standard fare these days. The main difference seems to be the pictures of musicians on the wall, the sheer amount of band name puns on the menu and the choice of background music, which is... interesting.  
Also, if you ask for the 'My Chemical Ristretto', they draw devil horns in your foam. Depending on who draws them, they're even recognizable as such.  
It's a little tacky, Sugawara thinks, but they do have some of the best coffee in this neighbourhood. They are seemingly always open, and the place is pleasantly calm at night, when it's just some goth kids reading, and the occasional party goer needing a coffee fix to keep going.  
He rather likes it.  
He happily sips his coffee and watches the street outside.

The line in front of the club is moving. The concert goers tonight are mostly older people who have dug up their old black clothes out of whatever attic box they were hiding in. They look a bit like a flock of crows, Sugawara muses as he watches them file inside.  
He smiles at the thought.  
Across the room, the man with the flash of red hair is starting a conversation with his young-looking employee about some horror movie he saw.  
His name is Tendou, Sugawara has learnt, and he appears to own the place.  
It's hard to tell how old he is, because he looks 22, but acts like he's thirty or something.  
“And then they EAT her!” Tendou shouts and he laughs at the mildly disgusted face on the boy.  
Okay, a very immature thirty.  
But still.  
The man intrigues Sugawara in ways not a lot of people do. He has a strange aura to him and he’s prone to using loud statements and big gestures. His knowledge of mildly creepy and very disgusting factoids and anecdotes appears to be endless as well.

Sugawara suspects, hopes for, perhaps, some well-hidden depths.  
But what interests him most, is how Tendou doesn’t use any of his usual blunt statements and bad jokes on him.  
It’s not like this coffee shop owner respects his customers. Sugawara once saw him go on a three minute rant on the symbolism of a girl’s earring while her coffee grew cold.  
But when he glances at Sugawara, and Sugawara smiles back, there’s only a quick dilating of the pupils and a small dusting of pink on his cheeks.  
It’s cute.  
It amuses Sugawara to no end and he’s very tempted to go along with it, to start a conversation and see how far he can take this, to find out what lies underneath all the boasting and banter.  
He would love to see how vulnerable he could make that man.  
But Sugawara is a professional, so he sips his coffee and looks out the window instead.

 

At eleven thirty, the show across the street is over, and a rush of people floods the coffee shop.  
They chatter, forming a line that leads outside. Tendou just interrogates everyone about the concert while his young barista (Goshiki, his name tag reads) rushes around nervously, making coffees and teas.  
Sugawara watches the place fill up, all seats taken except for the table where he sits.  
People tend to leave him alone.  
And just as fast as the crowd poured in, they are gone again.  
Like the tides, Sugawara thinks.

A few hours later, the shop is empty and the young barista has gone home.  
Tendou is talking at length about some anime to a tall, broad shouldered kid sitting at the counter. The you man only seems mildly responsive but that doesn’t stop the redhead from explaining the lengthy plot in detail, doing some of the voices. The main character's best friend gets an especially shrill rendition.  
The broad shouldered boy nods and occasionally smiles into his coffee.  
Sugawara wonders what his story is.  
It’s just the three of them now, against a background of experimental protest songs.  
Sugawara finishes his coffee and looks out at the street.  
It is calm now, the crowd dispersed, save for a few drunken stragglers and a homeless guy rifling through the trash.  
That's probably it for the night.

He sighs and gets up.  
“Goodnight,” he says, nodding to the other two on his way out.  
Tendou just waves, mild look of disappointment on his face.  
Maybe next time, Sugawara thinks, smiling to himself as he steps out into the night.  
Nearly three in the morning. He pulls out his phone.  
“Daichi? Yeah, no luck,” he whispers as he huddles against the cold.  
“Ok, take a break Suga,” the man on the other side of the line says.  
“I will find him,” Sugawara answers, and he closes the call.

 

 

“What's your name?” Tendou Satori asks the boy with broad shoulders, knowing full well that it's scribbled on the paper cup standing between them.  
“Wakatoshi,” he says and he looks up, hazel eyes piercing Tendou's gaze.  
The boy's face is always this side of bored. Tendou doesn't know if it's because he doesn't feel, or because he feels too much.  
But he's a gentle sort, he suspects. Quiet, stoic.  
It's not the first time he's come in. From what Tendou remembers, he shows up only when there's specific concerts across the street.  
“You're from out of town, aren't you Wakatoshi?” Tendou says, leaning over his counter and putting his head on his hand.  
“Mm.” Wakatoshi nods and Tendou ponders.  
He considers the ruggedness of the boy’s hands, a sign of physical labour.  
He studies the shift of muscle underneath Wakatoshi’s overly baggy sweatshirt, contemplates the warmth of skin and the texture of lips.  
Tendou is restless. He's on edge and annoyed and maybe a tiny bit frustrated at the lack of progress he's making with mister Sugawara.  
“You know, the first bus isn't for several more hours,” he drawls, waggling his eyebrows. “I'm off work in a bit, do you want to crash at my place?”  
And the boy looks at him, thinking it over for a second.  
One second longer than Tendou would like.  
He nods. “Mm,” he says.

 

Tendou walks Wakatoshi two blocks to his apartment, through the icy cold.  
It's quiet and foggy, damp air clinging to Tendou's jacket like it's trying to drown him in it.  
Next to him, the boy's breath makes little puffy clouds and his cheeks go rosy in the late autumn air in a way that Tendou finds endearing.  
“And then they EAT her!” he says enthusiastically, finishing his story.  
Wakatoshi nods obligingly.  
“And here we are.” Tendou opens the iron gate to his apartment building.  
He takes the boy upstairs and silently slips him through his door.  
“Anyway,” he says, putting away their coats and turning up the thermostat a bit, “we'll need to be quiet because my neighbour over there is a complete cunt, but you can take a shower if you want to heat up.”  
“Tendou.”  
The boy's voice is surprisingly soft, a low rumble near his ear.  
He turns around and Wakatoshi leans in. His lips feel exactly like Tendou had imagined.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi steps out of the subway and crosses the street to his apartment building, fishing his keys out of his pocket with one hand while the other holds a white plastic convenience store bag.  
He briskly climbs the steps and enters his home, closing the door with his foot and walking the length of the hallway before dropping the bag on the kitchen table.  
“Hello Princess,” he says to the long-haired white cat twirling around his legs. “Did you miss me?”  
The animal’s reply is a long, drawn out meow.  
“It seems like your papa spent another night getting nowhere closer to his goal,” Sugawara says and he opens a cupboard. To the loud pleas of his pet, he pulls out a can, emptying it into a bowl before placing it on the floor.  
Then he takes a box of treats out of the plastic bag and drops some into a small saucer he also gives the cat.  
“Sorry I've been neglecting you, sweetheart,” he says gently, scratching her on the top of her head. Princess makes a sound halfway between a purr and a ‘nomnom’.  
He smiles mildly.  
Then he stands up and pulls some ramen out of the bag. He puts them in the microwave, making the rounds of his plants as he waits for his food to finish cooking.  
He pulls some dried leaves off the Hawaiian palm and tops up the water for the peace lily. Then he frowns, takes a small pair of scissors from a shelf and trims an errant twig from a bonsai tree.  
Pleased with his work, he returns to his kitchen table and eats the ramen while reading the mail.  
He carefully puts away his dishes and takes a long shower before falling into bed, cat curled up to his side.

 

 

Tendou Satori wakes up to the light of day creeping through his heavy drapes.  
It’s barely different from night time, since in fall, the fog is so heavy in this city that the sun never breaks through anything lower than the fifteenth floor.  
Tendou lives on the third.  
But still, it's there, invading his eyelids. Tendou whines and buries his face in his pillow.  
Next to him in bed lies a young man with broad shoulders.  
What was his name again? Wakatoshi, he'd said.  
Piercings though his nose, chipped black nail polish and a bad taste in music.  
But a sweet kid. Earnest. Innocent, in a way.  
Pity about the bad taste in music, and the bad taste in men.  
Tendou stretches and swings his legs over the side of the bed.  
The whole room smells funky.  
He wrinkles his nose and picks up the condoms scattered on the floor, opening a window on the way to the bathroom.  
The sound of traffic flows into the room and the boy gives a muffled grunt.  
Tendou steps into his bathroom to take a shower.

By the time he's out and clattering around the kitchen, Wakatoshi appears in the doorway, looking bleary.  
Tendou puts a plate of toast and eggs down on the small formica table.  
“Eat up, kid,” he says, calling his guest over, “do you want coffee too?”  
Wakatoshi nods his head and ambles toward the table, not even bothering to put on his boxers.  
He looks paler than last evening, weaker, like he’s had a really rough night.  
But he scarfs down the offered food and chases it with some freshly brewed coffee.  
“Thank you, Tendou,” he says.  
“No prob. There's still warm water if you wanna take a shower. I need to get to work in about an hour.”  
The boy nods again and shuffles to the bathroom. Tendou steals a final glance at that ass before it disappears behind the door.  
Miracle boy Wakatoshi, he thinks, and he hums appreciatively.

He clears the table while the small tv on his kitchen counter goes over the list of missing persons, showing pictures of teen girls and boys, old men and women, one disturbingly young kid.  
There's new ones every day, and it's not clear to Tendou if they're ever found or if people just give up looking for them.  
It's just part of the daily life in this city.  
This is the kind of town where people disappear.  
The dad who went out to get cigarettes and never came back, the teenager tired of dealing with abusive parents, that kind of thing.  
Or, Tendou assumes, the ones that take a wrong turn, and are just never heard from again until their body washes up somewhere. There’s probably a lot of those as well.  
Tendou strips the bed, picks up his own stray clothes.  
The anchors on tv have started prattling on about some sporting event he doesn’t care about.  
He does the dishes. Dries them. Checks the clock.  
“You ok in there?” he shouts at the small bathroom.  
Wakatoshi opens the door and leans against it, half dressed.  
“Sorry,” he says, “the heat is making me a bit light-headed.”  
Steam drifts into the living room while Tendou hands the boy his clothes, occasionally helping him in them.

“Why don't I walk you to the bus station,” he says and he carefully, almost lovingly wraps a shawl around the boys neck. “This is a dangerous town. Don’t want you to get lost and kidnapped or something.”  
Wakatoshi gives him a blank look, but Tendou pulls his jacket straight and accompanies him through the morning fog, to the bus station two blocks away, telling a story about how as a child, he once voiced a commercial for cereal.  
Turns out the cereal had some carcinogenic chemical in it, so Tendou, sadly, never made it big as a child actor.  
It’s not like he had the kind of face to make it in that world anyway.  
When they arrive, he buys Wakatoshi a few power bars and a bottle of water.  
“You gonna be ok?”  
“Riding a bus isn’t a difficult task, Tendou.”  
“Alright then.”  
“Thank you for letting me sleep in your apartment.”  
“No problem, pretty boy,” Tendou says, and he waves him off.  
Cute kid, he thinks.  
He'd been so honest, so willing.  
Miracle boy Wakatoshi.  
Tendou shrugs and turns back, walking off towards his coffee shop to start his shift.

 

 

On a bus on the interstate, a young man named Ushijima Wakatoshi watches the grey buildings flit by.  
He has headphones on, blaring metal into his ears, but he can barely keep his eyes open.  
He feels weak, like last night took too much out of him.  
It’s weird, he thinks briefly, because it is far from the first time he’s done something like this.  
The boy falls asleep, head gradually lolling until it's resting against the cool glass.  
Over several dozen kilometres, the swaying of the bus makes his scarf sag.  
The bus hits a bump and Wakatoshi snorts and absent-mindedly scratches at two small scabs on his neck.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s note:** In case it’s not obvious yet, this fic will be stuffed to the gills with random references, mostly to obscure and less obscure goth, industrial and punk bands (like Front 242).  
>   
>  Since the menu at Monster Coffee is very heavy on the puns, have a small explainer.  
>  **Pun help**  
>  _Suicide Colombian: Colombian coffee – Suicide Commando_  
>  _My Chemical Ristretto: Ristretto coffee – My Chemical Romance_


	2. How to flirt with a salaryman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some amount of progress is made.

 Sugawara Koushi steps through the door of the restaurant and the spike in temperature immediately flushes his skin. Sniffling, he takes off his shawl and coat, and hands them to the young lady at the counter.  
“Table for Karasuno?” he says.  
“Right this way, sir.”  
The young woman leads him through a dimly lit room where business people are having lunch. There’s a few larger parties, he notices, and some meeting type deals. There’s also at least one guy getting handsy with a younger girl, that Sugawara hopes is his girlfriend, but probably isn’t.  
He follows the hostess past the main dining hall and into a private room at the back.  
“Suga!” Daichi, crisp suit, short cut hair, waves at him from the head of the table. “Glad you could make it.”  
“Sorry I’m late,” Sugawara says.  
He takes his seat, smiling at his colleagues. They’re a party of six, and the table in their midst is laden with plates full of different barbecued meats. It’s a bit much to handle straight out of bed, but it smells divine.  
Nishinoya, across from him, has already acquired a small pile of bones. The small man, with his flash of dyed, spiky hair, is busy gnawing on another set of ribs.  
“So what’s the occasion,” Sugawara says, picking out a spicy looking chicken wing.”  
“Client had a windfall,” Daichi says. “Won the lottery, paid his loan in full. I figured we all deserved a treat.”  
“Nice,” Sugawara nods, and he grabs the hot sauce, drenching his chicken in it. “So this isn't a celebration of Oikawa Tooru's ascent to president of the company?”  
“Our dearest leader hasn't come round to inviting the small fry out to dinner yet,” Daichi smiles diplomatically, “But I'm sure we'll get to talk to him soon enough. I wonder if he's still infatuated with milk bread?”  
“Can't hurt to get him some,” Sugawara chuckles. “But you did go all out, here, Daichi. I see even Ennoshita came”  
To his right, a mildly frumpy looking man lifts his head. “You make it sound like I’m unsociable, Sugawara,” he says, sounding offended.  
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Sugawara shakes his head and sinks his teeth into the meat.  
“We had to drag him out though,” Tanaka nods from across the table. “It’s like he’s allergic to fresh air.” He guffaws, sliding a hand over his shaven head.  
“Actually, air pollution in this city is rather high,” Ennoshita says. “And considering that I filter the air in my office-.”  
“Probably just stayed up too late doing computer shit,” Nishinoya interrupts, licking his fingers. He throws Sugawara a mischievous smile, made all the more striking now that his mouth is smeared red with grilled pork ribs.  
“What about you?” Tanaka nods at Sugawara. “You look like you just rolled out of bed.”  
“I’ve been working late,” Sugawara says. “I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get anything,” he adds, giving Daichi an apologetic look.  
Daichi waves away his concerns. “We’ll get there, don’t worry. Meanwhile, I’ve had Ennoshita create a blueprint of the neighbourhood.”  
Ennoshita looks up from his fried potatoes. “I’m nearly there,” he says. “I’ll get them to you tomorrow.”  
“Thanks,” Sugawara answers, and he nibbles the last piece of meat off his chicken wing, before grabbing another.  
“You know we could, uh, switch,” Asahi offers from his right side. He’s tall, long haired and bearded, the look of an attack dog but the demeanor of a golden retriever.  
“If you need a break, I mean,” Asahi continues.  
“It’s fine,” Sugawara assures him. “I’m really starting to get a feel for the place.”  
Sugawara’s lips curl, and Daichi raises an amused eyebrow at him.  
“Don’t get too attached,” he says lowly.  
“Of course not,” Sugawara answers. “Don’t be silly.”  
And he smiles, but Daichi gives him a look that’s filled with worry and Sugawara hates it when he does that, so he changes the subject.  
“Oh,” he says innocently. “I missed the game last night. Did we win?”  
“Oh my god!” Nishinoya starts up and Daichi rolls his eyes.  
“It was so cool!” Tanaka adds. And the two of them start detailing all the super cool moves their favourite team made, and all the stupid points the other team stole from them.  
Sugawara chews on chicken and lets the excited talk wash over him.

 

 

It is evening, at around a quarter past one, and Tendou Satori gathers his wits, and his nerves, around him.  
It's been three weeks since mister Sugawara started coming to this shop and for the first time, it's just the two of them.  
The setting is ripe for it.  
It's a regular workday so the place is calm. Tendou's sent the rest of the staff home, there's no concert across the street and mister Sugawara sits idly watching an empty pavement.  
Acutely aware of the fact that this is probably his one and only opportunity, Tendou adds a shot of rum to his regular drink and forces himself to sidle up to his most illustrious guest.  
“So what's your deal?” he says, casually leaning on the back of a chair.  
Mister Sugawara looks up, soft hazel eyes blinking in mild amusement.  
“My deal?”  
In what he hopes is a smooth motion, Tendou grabs the wooden chair, twirls it around and straddles the seat, arms folded across the back.  
“Your deal,” he repeats, pointing his mug at the man. “Did you get kicked out of your house? Is it part of your job to sit in coffee shops? Wife giving you the cold shoulder at home? Kids acting up? Maybe your hobby is to sip the same type of Colombian night after night while looking wistfully outside and not reading the newspaper? Or maaayyybe you're just looking for an excuse to see me?”  
Sugawara blinks, once, before letting out the cutest short little laugh Tendou has ever heard.  
“Well,” he says, small smile still on his lips, and he takes a deep breath.  
“I have an apartment, but I’m not particularly close to eviction, I also have an actual paying job that does not involve coffee shops. And no, I do not have a significant other. The only child I care for is a cat who may as well be my firstborn. My hobbies include gardening and, indeed, people watching and that is one of the main reasons I come here. But your company is much appreciated, since you're very good at this opening line business. Did you have to think that one over long?”  
“I'm a natural at improvisation,” Tendou grins.  
“I see,” Sugawara says, looking down at his cup with an amused expression. “So what, may I ask, is your deal?”  
“My deal?”  
“Your deal,” he nods, lips curled in a way that Tendou finds incredibly charming.  
“I'm a very single, and very gay, coffee shop owner with a penchant for the light haired and unobtainable,” Tendou admits.  
“I may have noticed that,” Sugawara says gently.  
“I get stuck working nights a lot because I have a number of badly trained students working for me and they need to occasionally show up for class. I would probably take the night shift anyway if it meant I could hit on you. By the way, what's the cat called?”  
Sugawara is now smiling widely, eyes twinkling as he forms the word: “Princess.”  
“God, you're serious,” Tendou bursts out laughing, “aren't you amusing, mister stiff suit.”  
“She's called that because it's what she is,” the beautiful man nods sagely.

 

 

The red haired man guffaws and Sugawara Koushi, who spends a lot of time being boring, careful, professional, reliable and above all _stable,_ finds it hopelessly intriguing.  
Tendou is telling some story about a one eyed dog that used to live in the alley behind the store, until his baker took it home and it nearly tore apart her flat. The story involves a lot of hand gestures and facial expressions and Sugawara smiles. This larger-than-life man walks through the world like a circus performer and he must admit that he is entertained.  
Surely he can slip every once in a while, he thinks. Surely he can allow himself to relax just once.  
Live a little, Nishinoya would say.  
If all goes well he’s only here for a few more days anyway.  
When Tendou finishes the story, Sugawara sits straight and pulls up the sweetest smile in his arsenal.  
“So,” he asks, “Is this the part where you ask me on a date?”  
“Well that depends,” Tendou purrs, “would you say yes?”  
“I might,” Sugawara grins, “What did you have in mind?”  
“They do say a first date should be sort of casual and low key public,” Tendou nods, raising both eyebrows knowingly, “so how about a coffee date?”

 

 

And so they talk. Over coffee. And Tendou Satori feels mildly like a high schooler going out with his crush as he ticks off all the important date questions.  
Sugawara's zodiac sign is Gemini. Chinese zodiac sign: Rooster.  
Blood type: AB. His first name is Koushi, which sounds _adorable._  
He has a corporate job that provides him with a stable income.  
He doesn't love his work, but he feels a certain loyalty to his boss.  
His hobbies include knowing way too much about house plants and putting too many spices into otherwise innocent foods.  
He's a big fan of horror movies, but he dislikes crime dramas.  
He suffers from insomnia, and sitting in weird places drinking too much coffee while watching people sway drunkenly across the pavement apparently soothes him.  
He thinks Tendou's taste in music is terrible, which is a fair observation.  
Sugawara is completely and utterly pleasant and even this close up Tendou finds him very, very hard to read.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi does not ask Tendou many questions, but he's provided with answers all the same.  
First name: Satori. Zodiac sign: Taurus, Chinese zodiac Ox, which means he really is either 34, or 22. Blood type: unknown.  
The red haired man isn't just a performer in public, he carries around a massive mask at all times, Sugawara realizes as they chat. He's seen a lot of people in his life who swaddle themselves in airs and persona's. Business means dealing with honour and 'saving face' on a regular basis, after all.  
Sometimes reputation is all you have. Sugawara knows this better than anyone.  
But he's never seen it this strongly.  
Tendou is all bravado and cheesy pick-up lines. He's built up out of glamour and fun, and Sugawara wants to know what lies underneath. Part of him wants to pry at it, endlessly fascinated by what's hidden beyond, wants to chip at the façade until Tendou lies bare and vulnerable and _real_ before him.  
But he finds that another part of him wants to protect this strange man, because he assumes that such levels of jesterhood inevitably hide pain.

After an hour or so, Sugawara comes to the realization that he really likes this guy, enough to be swept up in long conversations about horror movie monsters.  
The idea is mildly disconcerting, and he should stop, but he doesn't.  
He listens to Tendou talk, and notices that the man drops subtle hints of a life in the rock business, some job he had before he started dealing coffee for a living. It doesn't come as much of a surprise.  
What is stranger, is that instead of boasting, Tendou just sort of glosses over it, the same way you would mention your grades in high school or that part time job at the supermarket.  
Perhaps he thinks Sugawara would not be interested in these things, or perhaps he's humble bragging.  
If he is, he's very good at it.

 

 

It's half past three and Tendou Satori is telling the story of this one movie he watched that featured a haunted car tire. And when they got out of the cinema his car started acting up and his date - not him, never him - freaked the hell out and refused to be driven. So the both of them walked the twenty kilometers back to his place.  
Sugawara chuckles beautifully, and then his eye falls on the large clock above the counter.  
“Oh wow,” he says, “Time does fly.”  
Tendou grins like an idiot as the pretty man starts apologizing and packing up his newspaper.  
“I'm sorry,” he mutters, “I had promised to actually have an early night for once. It seems like I failed.”  
Tendou gets up and clears the mugs, taking them to the counter in an effort to hide his ever growing goofy grin. When he turns around, Sugawara is mere centimeters from his face.  
“That was fun,” he says softly, twinkling hazel eyes so close they're short-circuiting parts of Tendou's brain, “Thanks for the date.”  
“Mm, sure,” Tendou says, suppressing a helpless giggle, “No problem.”  
“So what happens now?” Sugawara asks and Tendou can only blink in stunned silence at the closeness of him, the way his light eyebrows are raised just a little, how his eyes are lifted up in gentle amusement.  
“Will you kiss me?” Sugawara smiles as he says it and sucks in his lips, just a little, and holy shit Tendou was not expecting that.  
“On a first date?” he asks.  
“You seem like the type,” Sugawara answers, lips still very, very close to Tendou, who can feel heat spreading outwards from his chest, quickly traveling down.  
“Well you don't seem like the type at all,” he breathes. “I would half expect you to slap me if I do.”  
“I probably won’t...” Sugawara grins.  
“Oh.”  
And before Tendou can fully pull himself together, his body decides to lean forward and Sugawara's eyes twinkle right next to his.

It's the softest of touches, a brief imprint of warmth and then Sugawara is gone again.  
“Goodnight, mister Tendou,” he smiles, turning on his heel and walking out.  
Tendou stands there, transfixed, while a mosh pit starts up in his stomach.  
The doorbell tingles as Sugawara steps out, the chime of it slowly drowning into the background music.  
It's not even one of Tendou's favourites, but it _is_ heading into the chorus.  
In a fit of unadulterated joy, he jumps on top of the counter, playing air guitar and howling the lyrics.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi walks back to the subway station, feeling warm and maybe a little giddy. He smiles to himself when he hears a loud voice sing along badly to some punk lyrics behind him.  
This guy is too cute, he thinks, taking out his phone. There's one message from Daichi.  
He's about to answer when his eyes land on a nearby wall and he stops, blinking at a poster plastered all over the side of the concert hall.  
They must have put them up this evening. The glue is still wet.  
It advertises a band glamorously posing in some kind of cemetery.  
It’s pretty clichéd, to be honest.  
What is probably the lead singer stands in the middle of the picture, arms outstretched like he’s crucified to the night sky, and he looks into the camera with a half-smile that appears to Sugawara to be both practised and very effective.  
The rest of the band lingers in the background, most of them leaning against Victorian grave monuments.  
Swishy and barely legible text announces their performance.  
Sugawara clicks the first contact on his list.  
“Daichi? I found him.”

 

When Sugawara shows up at the coffee shop the next night, and the night after that, Tendou's staff is always mysteriously gone.  
“Slow night,” the redhead shrugs.  
It's pretty transparent, but it amuses Sugawara, not in the least because it gives him the opportunity to chat with his strange date without the prying eyes of his overly interested employees.  
On the third night, Sugawara arrives a bit later, and he finds several people sleeping on the pavement in front of the concert hall.  
Frowning, he walks into the coffee shop, where Tendou waves at him cheerily.  
“I'll bring your drink right over!” he says, before turning back to his customer, a broad shouldered kid that looks vaguely familiar.  
“There you go, Wakatoshi, one Latte Immortelle. I added an extra sleeve to keep it warm for ya.”  
“Thank you, Tendou,” the guy says in a deep voice. He turns around and walks back out, where he takes his seat on a sleeping bag on the pavement.

 

 

 

 

“What are they doing?” Sugawara Koushi asks when Tendou comes over with a large Colombian and whatever it is he puts in his own mug.  
“Oh, Blood Swans,” Tendou answers off-handedly.  
“I'm sorry?”  
“Blood Swans,” Tendou grins, “It's a band. They're performing in two days, probably setting up tomorrow. They're quite popular, so people camp out for tickets, and to be front row and all that.”  
“Ohh,” Sugawara says, absentmindedly watching the small encampment that's formed in front of the concert hall. “Do you know them?”  
“Enough to know you'd hate them,” Tendou says. When Sugawara looks at him imploringly he adds: “They're mostly popular with impressionable youngsters and naïve girls. You are neither.”  
Sugawara looks out the window in silence for a moment.  
Two days, he thinks, and he turns to Tendou with a smile.  
“I'd like to go somewhere else for our date tonight,” he says in a soft voice, “do you live far from here?”

 

 

By the time they reach Tendou Satori's front door, his head is already spinning.  
Suga's had an arm around him for the better part of their walk.  
Suga smells of expensive cologne, but only faintly so, as if he uses just enough to stay subtle.  
Suga is warm and soft and _sophisticated_ and all Tendou can think of is that he's going to get laid tonight by the guy he's been crushing on for weeks.  
He's not entirely sure why he's nervous, since he has had enough lovers to, say, fill a concert hall.  
But none of them have kept him on his toes quite as much as this pretty salaryman. There's that.

Tendou closes the door to his apartment with his foot, so he doesn't have to take his hands, or his mouth, off Suga. The guy tastes sweet and warm, and mildly bitter like the Colombian coffee he so adores.  
He shrugs off his coat, dropping it somewhere near the entrance.  
“Aren't you going to give me a tour?” Suga murmurs against his lips, before loosening his tie.  
“I wouldn't want to withhold the wonders of Casa Tendou to you, dear guest,” Tendou replies, “but sightseeing can wait.”  
If he has to let go of this guy for even a second, he's pretty sure he's going to implode.  
But then Suga's tongue is in his mouth again and he needs every inch of coordination to dance the both of them into the general vicinity of his bedroom.  
They make it as far as his reading chair, where Suga pushes him down.

Before Tendou's suddenly very wide eyes, the pretty salaryman steps out of his pants and walks over, hooded eyes twinkling in the soft light of the reading lamp. Suga straddles him, wearing nothing but black-and-orange striped socks and a white silk shirt. He kisses Tendou deeply and slaps away his roving hands trying to unbutton the rest his clothing.  
“I'd like to keep my shirt on,” he whispers in Tendou's ear, nipping lightly at the shell.  
“Really? I could turn up the heater if you-”  
“It's plenty warm in here, Sa-To-Ri,” Suga says, punctuating each syllable with a hot breath that Tendou is sure causes sparks to run up through his head and jump off each individual strand of red hair on his head.

Suga, in his lap, does strip Tendou of his t-shirt and he takes the time to slowly run his fingers over the black ink on his arms and torso.  
“You know, they say that every tattoo has a story,” he says, looking at Tendou with a sly smile.  
Tendou nods, and hisses when Suga grinds on him.  
“That's a lot of stories,” Suga says, placing soft kisses on his shoulder, and down towards his chest. When he looks up, Tendou gives him a pronounced pout.  
“But perhaps you can tell them another time.”  
He reaches down and unbuttons Tendou's too-tight jeans.  
“Well then, mister excitable,” he whispers and he pulls a small sachet of lube out of his shirt pocket.  
He wordlessly places it between Tendou's fingers, then grabs both of the redhead's hands, placing them on his ass.  
He leans forward, close enough for their lips to nearly touch, close enough for the words to flow into Tendou's mouth.  
“Finger me.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s note:** While most of the bands and movies and stuff in this story are real, Blood Swans definitely isn’t.  
>  **Pun help**  
>  _Latte Immortelle: Latte - L’âme Immortelle_


	3. The trouble with rock stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is some commotion.

 Tendou Satori lies in bed and grins at the ceiling.  
Next to him, in the crook of his arm, lies the beautiful man called Sugawara. He’s breathing softly, looking very much like some kind of angelic creature in his now very wrinkled white shirt.   
If Tendou allows himself to look down, he can just about see the curve of Suga’s butt peeking from beneath that shirt. He tries to avoid it. Staring at it directly would only make him horny again, and he really doesn’t wanna wake the guy.  
Not yet at least.  
Maybe later. When he's recovered a bit.  
So he turns his gaze back to the ceiling.

It’s remarkable how good he feels.   
The sudden realization that this is an emotion he’s still capable of is like jumping in a lake on a hot day. It’s unexpected, amazing, and he’s absolutely going to regret it later.  
He finds himself considering possible futures and it scares him.  
Part of his brain is piping up with every single reason – and there are several – why this is a terrible, horrible idea and why Tendou would be the worst boyfriend in the history of mankind, especially to someone as seemingly innocent as this guy. But the rest of him, his heart, his dick, his mouth, his fingers, his eyes, his ears, ok, mostly his dick, are having none of it.  
He wants to frolic through fields with this guy, climb hills with him, maybe even watch The Nightmare before Christmas with him.  
He’s tempted to poke Suga, to see what he’d look like with his face all scrunched up, to double-check if he’s real, but he doesn’t.  
Self-restraint is his forte, Tendou thinks, and he pushes down all the negative thoughts, all the over-excitement and especially the ideas of future relationships, and shoves them in a metaphorical box, before sitting on it.  
For now, he’ll just be happy. So he lays back and grins at his ceiling.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi wakes up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Colombian, he notes, smiling to himself.  
This guy is too cute.  
Good kisser. Surprisingly strong.   
Knows exactly what he’s doing, which is slightly unexpected, considering his general nervousness he displayed when trying to seduce him.  
But Sugawara can never get a good read on the guy. Whenever he thinks he’s got him wrapped around his finger, utterly breathless underneath his hands, Tendou will jump up and do something unexpected.  
So far, Sugawara has failed to reduce him to a puddle, like he’d done before with other men.  
Lesser men, Sugawara thinks.  
At least this one keeps him on his toes.  
He finds this new experience confusing and very, very exciting.   
It scares him a little.

“Breakfast?” Tendou asks when Sugawara pads into the living room.  
He really is getting entirely too fond of this coffee shop owner.  
“Mm, I don’t want to impose on you,” Sugawara replies, “but I’ll take some of that coffee if you’ll let me.”  
Two more days, he tells himself.  
He has two more days before he has to cut and run. This has already gone to his head way too much. He must end it now. Before he gets too close.

Sugawara shuffles into the bathroom with determination and splashes water in his face.  
End it, he thinks while he straightens his hair and puts on the rest of his clothes.  
He sneaks some of Tendou’s deodorant. It smells heavy and bombastic.  
He really has to end it, Sugawara thinks as he walks into the tiny kitchen with its tiny TV and reaches for the Boba Fett mug that’s waiting for him on the counter.   
Tendou’s sitting in a folding chair by the kitchen table, rifling through his mail and Sugawara mentally prepares for the awkward silence of ‘the morning after’ while he inhales the smell of roast beans.  
He should do it now, he thinks, before he makes things hard on himself.  
“Do you know how medieval carpenters used to turn trees into planks?” Tendou remarks while he frowns at an envelope.  
“Excuse me?” Sugawara blinks.  
“Planks,” Tendou says, “For furniture and stuff. Before they had sawing machines.”  
“I... don’t… know that,” Sugawara says, taking a seat at the table in mild confusion.  
“The thing is,” Tendou starts, putting down his paperwork, “that villages didn’t have, like, the man power or whatever to saw a giant tree lengthwise down the middle, see? So what they did, was they all got together to haul the tree and they dropped it in this carpenter’s yard. And then the carpenter comes and hammers a bunch of wedges in, all along the length of the tree. This splits the wood, see.”  
Tendou depicts all the little movements of the carpenter while explaining this, and Sugawara finds himself smiling.  
“And then he waits,” Tendou says. ‘Like a few days or a week, I dunno. However long it takes for the tree to get its act together. And then the carpenter comes back. And he hammers the wedges a little bit deeper. And then he _waits_ like a week, and he comes back and hammers the wedges a little deeper, until the tree is split clean in half.”  
Tendou’s hands fall apart, palms up on the table, two halves of a tree.   
He takes a sip from his own Darth Vader mug and continues.  
“So now this carpenter dude has two halves of a tree, but no planks yet. So what he does is, he takes the half tree, and he hammers in wedges, all along the length, and _then”,_ he raises his voice, holding up his finger for emphasis, “he _waits_ like a week before going back and hammering the wedges in deeper.”  
Sugawara’s laugh bubbles up before he can stop it and Tendou just grins at him.  
“So what does he do in between? All the waiting and the, uh, hammering?” Sugawara asks, but Tendou just shrugs.  
“I’m guessing there’s sanding involved, from like the previous tree. But mostly people just knew how to live back then. Probably sat around watching his kids play or something.”  
Sugawara smiles again and downs the rest of his drink before putting it on the counter and looking for his coat.   
“I’m sad to say that I live in more rushed times,” he says, putting it on, “I should really go. Thanks for breakfast.”  
“Any time,” Tendou says as Sugawara gets up and walks toward the door.   
“So, you, uh, want to do this again, pretty boy?” he asks as he comes up to show Sugawara out.

End it, Sugawara thinks.   
Oh god, end it. Pull off the band-aid and disappear. It's not like Tendou knows where he lives. It's not like he can't spend the next two days outside, or in some bar.  
End it.  
Tendou leans his elbow on the door frame, sagging shirt sleeve revealing a very pronounced biceps and the beginning of some tribal tattoo Sugawara hasn’t heard the full story on.   
That man wields swagger in ways that are absolutely illegal.  
Tendou raises an eyebrow at him, lips curled in a smile that is both inviting and questioning, and just a tiny bit insecure.  
“I’d like that,” Sugawara smiles, and he lightly touches Tendou’s arm before he walks out.  
Two more days, he tells himself, while in the apartment behind him Tendou lets out a barely muffled victorious whoop.

 

 

Tendou Satori flutters into his coffee shop like leaves blown in by autumn wind and Kawanishi gives him an exasperated look.  
“Dear god, did you finally fuck the salaryman,” he says, rolling his eyes.   
Tendou proceeds to hum to himself for the rest of afternoon and only gets more cheerful when it pisses off his day manager enough for him to start angrily stacking paper cups and fighting over music choices.  
“Sexual activity does improve mood and reduces stress. Kawanishi, buddy, you should try it sometime,” Tendou says, elbowing him in the side. “You are taking good care of Hana aren’t you?”  
“Leave her out of this,” Kawanishi hisses.  
“C- congratulations, mister Tendou,” Goshiki yells, and Kawanishi sniggers.  
“Much as I appreciate your innocent enthusiasm,” Tendou says gracefully, “this isn’t exactly something you should congratulate me for. It’s almost like you doubt my aura of raw manly attraction here.”  
Goshiki shakes his head quickly, face going red. “I wouldn’t dream of it sir, it’s just that you really seem to like him.”  
This gives Tendou pause. “I do, don’t I,” he says, leaning on the counter. “I still haven’t really figured out what his deal is, though.”  
“Ten bucks says he’s married,” Kawanishi grunts.  
“Shut up, Kawanishi.”  
“Or a serial killer.”  
“I said _shut up_ Kawanishi.”

 

 

Sugawara Koushi briefly checks his reflection in a shop window, smiling lightly when he notices the blushing girl behind it.  
He tilts his head, approving. He looks impeccable in his crisp suit.  
It’s a matter of some pride to him.  
Reputations are important, after all, and he has to keep his high.  
There's a rumor going round these parts of the city, he knows. About an upstart gang of criminals quickly rising through the ranks of the yakuza. They have hothead members, and a mean looking giant, and a very smart, diplomatic leader. But the most dangerous member of this gang, so they say, is the one behind the throne. The strategist who does most of the dirty work.  
According to a rather persistent urban legend, he can look at you and see your sins.  
They say he will strangle a man with one hand, while handing out flowers to small children with the other.  
They also say, and Sugawara is particularly intrigued by this one, that the only people who are not scared when looking this man in the eye are the young and the innocent, because they are the only ones with nothing to fear from him.  
Sugawara chuckles at the thought.   
In his experience, there are very few innocents in this town.

“Mister Terushima?” he says, approaching a punkish looking man in a tracksuit. His voice is soft, polite, almost lost in the din of traffic and the music wafting out of a nearby store.  
“Yeah?" The man looks up and frowns. His blond hair is gelled, probably spiked up at some earlier point. Right now, it's flopped down like trampled grass. His eyes are bloodshot and he smells of smoke and sweat.  
"Who the fuck are you?” he says, voice gravelly with habitual intimidation. “Can’t you see I’m busy? Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it.”  
"I’m not selling anything, mister Terushima," Sugawara says and he smiles sweetly. "I’m here to speak with you concerning a business deal you made with my associates."  
The man's eyes go wide and he looks around. A few meters down the street, a black car with tinted windows is parked. Leaning against it are a tall man with a ponytail, and a smaller one with dyed hair smoking a cigarette, both sporting black suits and serious, rigid expressions. On the other side, a small distance behind Sugawara, a man with a shaven head and a black suit is perusing a book stand.  
Terushima curses under his breath and Sugawara indicates the alley next to them.  
"This will only take a moment of your time," he says and the man, going slightly pale, steps in.

"Who sent you?” he barks as they walk deeper into the backstreet. “How did they find me?"  
“As you probably realize, mister Terushima, I’m here on behalf of the Aoba Company, and the truth of the matter is, they will always find you."   
He tilts his head at the man. "So about your debt."  
"Look! I'm sorry! I've been trying to get it, I swear," the guy starts and Sugawara nods thoughtfully.  
“I don’t doubt that, mister Terushima.”  
He looks up. Dark clouds are hanging over them. He pouts.  
"The bitches just won't pay! Ok?,” Terushima goes on. “One of them ran off, and I had to track her down and show her who’s boss. I went a bit too hard on that one? Set an example, you know, but now she can’t get johns. One of the others is in hospital, too. It takes time, alright."  
"Is that so?" Sugawara says mildly, and he opens his briefcase.  
The man takes a step back, mild panic in his eyes, but he visibly relaxes when Sugawara pulls out a plastic rain tarp.  
"Look, I can get it, I swear. I just have to work them a bit harder. I have… " he looks in his pockets, "I can give you 20k. For starters." He shoves a roll of bills at Sugawara. “Take it! I’ll get the rest, and interest!”  
Sugawara frowns. "That's not what you owe us, mister Terushima,” he says, carefully putting on the coat.  
"It's the bitches' fault! They’re too far gone! I need new ones, pretty ones, _young_ ones. It takes time."  
"I'm not here to tell you how to conduct your, ah… business, mister Terushima," Sugawara says, buttoning up the coat.  
"Take it! Come on, you’re here to talk, aren’t you? Put the pressure on? I get it, ok? I’m moving as fast as I can. Take the 20k and get going, before someone else finds us."  
"Someone else?" Sugawara shakes his head. He takes the money from the man's outstretched hand and carefully places it in his coat pocket. "My, but you are in a lot of trouble, aren't you?"  
"Look, just fucking back off, ok?” Terushima grunts, eyebrows knit and a sneer forming on his lips. “You're lucky you're getting any money. I was expecting an enforcer or something. If they’re sending you, they’re obviously fine with waiting for it.”  
“Why is that?” Sugawara asks.  
“What are you going to do? Politely ask my fingers to break themselves? Look. You’re a good guy. I like you. But you’re not exactly scary."  
"Oh, I realize I'm not," Sugawara says, mildly distracted by his briefcase again.  
"You don't even come close to my scariest enemies, ok?” Terushima says, puffing himself up. “So take the fucking money and thank your lucky stars that you’re walking away with anything."

Sugawara looks up and the man blinks.   
The light haired man, with his transparent rain tarp, is completely different than a few moments ago.  
The friendly demeanour, the mild smile, even the soft gaze, it’s all gone. In its stead is a completely blank, cold mask.  
"Interestingly, nonthreatening does not mean that I'm not dangerous," Sugawara says, taking a silver gun from his briefcase. "I find that people get distracted by the face and forget what lies underneath."  
In the street outside, there is shouting. Someone loudly accusing someone else of walking into them on purpose.  
"Wait! I paid, I just fucking paid,” Terushima says, backing away.  
"You did not pay me what you owe us, mister Terushima."  
"I said I need more time! I thought you were here to talk!"  
"I am not. It appears the Aoba Company has run out of patience."  
By the blaring sounds in the street outside, the fight has started blocking up traffic.  
"Who the fuck are you!" the man yells.  
"I've been called the Silver Crow."  
"Wait, YOU?"

And then the gun is pressed against Terushima's forehead and there's a bang.  
Pigeons scatter. Blood splatters against the wall. Bits of bone and brain matter cascade onto the concrete and the man sags down, no more than a shell of skin and flesh with a gaping hole at the top.  
Sugawara sighs and listens. The street outside is loud as ever. Cars honking, people going about their day.  
He calmly takes off the raincoat and steps out of it, taking the time to wipe a smudge of blood from his shoe.  
Behind him, rats gather to feast.  
He grabs his suitcase and walk back out of the alley, into the light of day.

 

 

 

 

 

 It’s late in the afternoon and Tendou Satori is taking stock of his supplies in the kitchen, when a crash makes him sprint to the front.  
The first thing he sees when he walks through the door is Suga, beautiful, confused-looking Suga standing in line before the cash register.  
The second thing he sees is Eri, his baker, sprawled on the floor in front of the coffee machine.  
The third thing he sees is Yamagata, his old friend and the world’s loudest drummer, leaning over the counter with a worried look on his face.  
Tendou groans, because that means…  
Semi Eita, singer of Blood Swans, young god and teenage idol extraordinaire, stands in the middle of Tendou's coffee shop, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.  
“Semisemi?” Tendou mutters.  
“Sorry about that,” Semisemi says. “I guess I caught her by surprise.”  
Tendou kneels down and props his baker up against the counter, while Goshiki fans her with the hem of his apron.   
“She just fainted when he came in”, the red-faced boy says, sweating way more than usual.  
“Get her some water,” Tendou instructs and Goshiki makes for the fridge.  
“Fan, is she?” Semi asks from somewhere across the counter while Tendou straightens up.  
“What do you want?” he asks, face deadpan.

Semi Eita, 1,8 metres of undiluted sex appeal, folds his arms and looks around the coffee shop with a small pout. His hair is light and feathery still, Tendou notices, with dark tips that Semi thinks make him look mysterious.   
He's wearing impossibly tight ripped jeans, a fucking Blood Swans t-shirt and way more chains and belts than are necessary, or even practical. He looks like a Final Fantasy character come to life and considering the adoring crowd he gathers wherever he goes, he makes that look work somehow.   
But then, Semi could make anything look good.

“I figured I’d check out your place,” Semi says, black-and-gold lined eyes sweeping over the glass case with pastries. They are named things like Black Flan, Siouxsie and the Banana Bread, Strüdel Tendencies and Red Velvet Acid Christ.  
“It’s nice,” he concedes.  
“Well, now that you’ve seen it, you can die happily. Off you go,” Tendou replies with a closed eyed grin that shows all his teeth.  
“Oh, I also brought these,” Semi says, fishing a small envelope out of his back pocket and placing it on the counter. “Two tickets for tomorrow night. Come see me? For old time's sake?”  
Tendou doesn’t even look at them, concentrating instead on Eri, who is blinking rapidly in the face of a very concerned looking Goshiki.   
“I'd rather not,” Tendou says. “Bad music gives me indigestion. You know how it goes. Mind if I give them to her?”  
“Are you sure you want to do that, Satori?” Semi asks and there’s just the tiniest of glints in his eye.  
Tendou squints. “I need her here on Saturday for a day shift. Please don't fuck my staff. Or take them on any grand adventures.”  
Semi looks around again, eyes landing on Goshiki, who immediately freezes and stands to attention. The rock star blinks at the boy, before his gaze travels further, taking in the breathless crowd, the confused guests and Tendou’s cold glare.  
Semi’s glorious lips curl into the lightest of smiles. “These are your people, huh?” he asks.  
“They are. I pay them and everything.”  
“Fine.” Semi shrugs, and just like that, the tension that Tendou hadn’t noticed was building up like a thick fog, is lifted.

“So, you guys gonna buy something or what?” Kawanishi drones from behind the cash register.  
Semi just turns around and struts toward the door.  
“Rude,” Kawanishi mumbles, but he is largely ignored while the world's most narcissistic singer walks through an adoring crowd that parts for him like the Red Sea.   
It’s a thing Tendou has always considered a bit strange about Semisemi. Other idols would get a whole battalion of security people to keep the scrubs away from them. Semi has never believed in that, nor has he needed it. Fans somehow always leave a respectful distance, even as they try to reach out, spellbound, to breathe the same air he does.  
It’s almost as if he’s some god they’re afraid to touch.  
“Well, it was fun seeing you again,” Yamagata grins and he waves, following his friend outside.

 

It’s nearly midnight when Tendou finally sags into the chair across from Suga.  
Kawanishi has decided to take Eri home, because she’s still Extremely Excited. The girl has been clutching her VIP Blood Swan tickets to her chest as if they’re the fucking second coming of Christ. She’s refused to let them go this entire time and it makes it hard to open doors.  
Kawanishi, meanwhile, has promised Tendou not to do anything other than just walk her home, because anything more would cause Drama.   
Tendou hopes he keeps that promise because holy shit don’t cheat on Hana you dolt, but also he doesn’t want to deal with the fallout of those two breaking up. Again.  
Goshiki has gone home early, because meeting a real life rock star, even a shitty one like Semisemi, made the kid actually throw up.   
Tendou sighs and takes a sip from his mug.  
“Was that someone you know?” Suga asks gently, observing the still growing encampment outside.  
“My ex,” Tendou grunts.  
“Your ex?”  
He nods.  
“ _An_ ex or _the_ ex”, Suga asks with a sly smile.  
Tendou grins. “The ex. But I'm sure we all agree that you're cuter.”

 

Two hours later, the incredibly cute Suga is sitting in Tendou’s lap on his mildly unkempt bed, wearing only a greenish shirt and yellow dotted socks.  
He’s running delicate fingers over Tendou’s skin in a way that makes him want to purr, and he’s looking at the different patterns adorning Tendou's body with interest.  
“This one I recognize,” he says, pointing at a small tattoo just underneath Tendou’s collarbone. Two red swans, their heads entwined to form a heart, bound together by barbed wire. It’s incredibly tacky, now that Tendou thinks about it, but it felt profound when he got the thing.  
“It was on that singer’s shirt,” Suga says.  
“Blood Swans,” Tendou nods. “It’s their logo. Semi wears his own band’s t-shirts because he’s the world’s worst narcissist and also he thinks it looks cool.”  
Suga smiles at this and Tendou pulls him down for a kiss.  
“You must really like that band, huh,” Suga says in a low voice, “were you in it?”  
“I was their roadie,” he answers.  
“How glamorous,” Suga smirks.  
“As glamorous as it gets when you’re hauling stuff for a bunch of coked-out musicians.”  
“They’re pretty popular,” Suga says off-handedly, walking his hand across Tendou’s chest.  
“Blood Swans is four decent musicians and one singer who steals the spotlight,” Tendou grumps, and Suga casually flicks a nipple as if it’s not the sexiest thing in the world.  
“Would you like me to stop talking?” Tendou hisses.  
The gorgeous man in his lap just leans in and runs his tongue up the side of Tendou’s neck.  
It’s taking an awful lot of his control to not just come apart at the seams right that second. The way Suga looks at him, the sheer determination in those hazel eyes, it makes his blood boil.   
In a good way.  
He has a thing for light haired and unobtainable, after all.

Suga gives him a smouldering smile and runs his fingers down Tendou's arm, dancing across patterns before landing on the back of his hand, softly massaging the skin.  
“I like your hands,” Suga says.  
Tendou pouts. “I don't.”  
“Why not?”  
“They're weird,” he says, spreading his fingers and wiggling them. “They're long and too thin and they're creepy.”  
“Well I like them,” Suga smirks. “They're good at... certain things.”  
Suga bites his lip, eyes hooded and alive with impish joy, and Tendou is sure that if that man keeps looking at him like that, he's going to lose it. He takes Suga’s chin in one hand and pulls him into a deep kiss.  
“I'm going to need you to lie down, mister Sugawara,” he says, lips finding their way across the man's jaw before nipping at his ear.  
“Why is that,” comes the soft angelic voice that sends shivers down his spine.  
“Because I'm going to suck you off till you scream my name.”

 

Tendou lies in bed after what is probably some of the best sex he’s ever had.   
Next to him lies the beautiful, smouldering Suga. His chest rises and falls in a soft pattern that is utterly calming and Tendou watches it from the corner of his eye, wondering if he can hold on to this image forever.  
The clock reads four thirty when his lover (boyfriend? are they at that point yet?) shifts.  
Tendou closes his eyes, pretending to sleep while the man he's maybe mildly obsessing over slips out of his bed and softly crosses the room. He quietly takes his clothes, neatly folded on a chair, and puts them on before slipping out of the apartment in the dark.  
Tendou is certain he can hear a soft sigh before Suga closes the door behind him, but that’s probably his imagination. Because that would indicate the guy feels sorry, and no one’s ever felt sorry about leaving Tendou behind.  
It’s probably for the best, he tells himself, while something in his chest sinks into a swamp of black water.  
He lies in bed and frowns at the ceiling, cursing his penchant for light haired and unobtainable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Pun Help!**   
>  _Black Flan: Flan – Black Flag_   
>  _Siouxsie and the Banana Bread: Banana bread – Siouxsie and the Banshees_   
>  _Strüdel Tendencies: Apple strüdel -- Suicidal Tendencies_   
>  _Red Velvet Acid Christ: Red Velvet Cake – Velvet Acid Christ_


	4. A Series of Unfortunate Events

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things don't go as planned.

“Looks like it’s gonna be a bit quieter starting tomorrow,” Kawanishi says, leaning on the counter with his chin in one hand.   
Across the street, the line is finally moving. A Very Excited Eri, flanked by her Equally Excited best friend, waves and Goshiki waves back.  
“Good riddance,” Kawanishi adds.  
“Mmm?” Tendou hums.  
“It’ll be easier to clean the fucking toilets now they’re not being used as a makeshift camping bathroom. How desperate do you have to be to clean yourself in a sink for three days, just to see a shitty band?”  
“You don’t like them much, do you mister Kawanishi?” Goshiki pipes up.  
“Do I look like a fucking thirsty girl to you?” Kawanishi spits.  
“So your girlfriend is in that line, then?” Tendou asks, not looking up from the cup where he’s experimenting with new forms of foam art. He's struggling to get the lines right. He’s never been any good at this.  
“Shut up,” Kawanishi grumbles.  
“Does she get all wet at the thought of Semisemi with his shirt off?” Tendou presses on.  
“You fucking did, from what I hear,” his day manager replies, probably already regretting taking over Eri’s shift for her.  
“Well, he’s hotter than you, for sure,” Tendou says, “better keep Hana away from him.”  
He ducks just as a tea towel comes sailing his way.  
“Shut up, mister I Can’t Draw For Shit.”  
“Rude,” Goshiki mutters.  
“Yeah? What’s he drawing then? Go on, tell me what that godforsaken scribble is supposed to represent.”  
Goshiki inches closer and peers at the cup of cappuccino, topped with several lines of chocolate syrup.  
“Uhhh. Is it a hat?” he tries, and Kawanishi next to him bends double with laughter.  
“It’s an anarchy symbol, Goshiki,” Tendou grunts and he has to stop himself from slapping the kid when he, honest to god, tilts his head and frowns at the masterpiece of milk foam art.  
“Maybe you could use cocoa powder and a stencil?” Goshiki suggests.  
Tendou had not thought of this.  
“See?” he says, spreading his arms wide and gripping Goshiki by the shoulder, “this is the kind of creative input I appreciate in my staff. You’re going places, my boy. You’ll be my next day manager in no time.”  
Kawanishi just snorts while Goshiki shudders in excitement.  
“Better make the stencil yourself, bud, our boss will probably cut off his own fingers. Also he can’t draw for shit.”  
“I’ll get right on it!” Goshiki shouts, nearly saluting as he runs off into the kitchen to look for craft supplies.  
“Where’s salaryman,” Kawanishi asks softly when he’s gone.  
“Dunno,” Tendou says.   
Probably back home to his wife or something, he thinks.  
He gives up on his foam art and turns around, scrolling through playlists on the sound system for something to distract him. A few seconds later, Mindless Self Indulgence blast through the shop.  
Kawanishi frowns and quietly starts to clean out the pastry case.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi kneels and carefully places the small reinforced case on the ground, before opening it.  
He’s on the roof of a faux classicist office building, with an excellent view of the back balcony of the concert hall.  
Swiftly, expertly, he assembles the rifle. Not a single stray or superfluous movement is used.  
It's a source of mild pride to him.  
Not that it gives him pleasure, doing this. He's not like that madman Lev, Nekoma's Russian hitman who cackles when he guns people down. And he certainly isn’t like the man he only knows as KyoKen, whose brutality makes Sugawara shudder.   
But he _is_ reliable.  
Sugawara does not remember how many lives he's taken, but he knows it's more than thirty.  
That's when he stopped counting.  
A clean kill, no trace, no witnesses.  
He'd be lying if he said that he wasn’t somewhat proud of the mastery with which he pulled off hits.  
But the actual death, the pain, he would rather forget.  
So he stopped counting.

All he knows about this target is that he is far from innocent.  
They rarely are, Sugawara thinks as he lines up the sight.  
They're gamblers, gangsters, pimps or just plain old murderers themselves.  
But this one is different, Daichi said. This one is a serial killer.  
“He leaves a trail of dead prostitutes and lost teenagers behind wherever he goes,” Daichi told him. “He took one of the Lieutenants favourite hostesses and now he needs to go. Stake the place out, find him, end him. You'll be doing the world a favour.”

It’s unfortunate that the guy has a history with the coffee shop owner, Sugawara thinks. Their relationship appears to be strained, but it’s probably still going to hurt Tendou to hear about his death.  
But then, it shouldn’t matter. Sugawara will never see him again.  
The red haired loud-mouth was a minor lapse in judgement, he keeps repeating to himself.  
It’s a weakness he probably shouldn’t have indulged in, but that’s how the hand was played.  
He rolls his neck and sighs deeply. There’s an ache in his gut that he’d rather not think about.  
“You slept together twice,” Sugawara mutters at himself angrily. “This is nothing a week of minor heartache and ice cream can’t fix.”  
For either of them, he hopes.  
So he sits there and tries not to glance at the roof of the coffee shop, just behind the concert hall.

 

Sugawara manages to forget the time while he waits, but finally the back door of the concert hall opens and Semi Eita sways out, arm around a young woman.  
Sugawara takes some comfort in the fact that it is not the Eri girl. This one will no doubt be traumatized but there’s very little he can do about it now, except hope that she’s very drunk. She certainly looks it. Her movements are uncoordinated and she hangs on Semi’s arm like some kind of doll.  
He aims, waiting for a moment when he has a clear shot.  
Through the sight of Sugawara’s rifle, Semi takes a swig from a bottle and kisses the girl. His mouth travels to her neck in a move that looks like a make-out session but feels somehow violent.  
The girl shudders, whimpers, but Semi holds her tight, one hand buried in her hair, while the other claws at her arm to stop her from sagging.  
Sugawara's breath falters for just a moment when Semi lets go. The girl in his sight goes completely limp while the singer takes another sip from the bottle. He smashes it on the roof and Sugawara waits, breath calm and unwavering again, for just the right moment.  
It happens almost immediately. Semi drops the girl on the floor and walks up to the edge of the balcony to look over the side at the street below.  
It’s a perfect shot. Quick, deadly, right between the eyes. Sugawara takes it without hesitation.  
He waits just long enough to see the bullet enter, leaving a red mark in Semi's forehead, before swiftly taking down the rifle and dismantling it.  
When he’s finished packing the weapon, he takes out a small pair of binoculars.  
He’s heard no screams, no alarms yet. The only sound is the passing of cars and the soft murmur of a crowd still trickling out of the concert hall. Sugawara has about three minutes to get away even if they find the victim right this second. Checking through his binoculars, he sees the girl sprawled on the roof, pale and oddly gaunt, head lolling to the side.  
No witnesses.  
He scans the balcony, checking the scene, but he does not find the singer.  
That can’t be right.  
He searches the place, from the door, still closed, to the girl, unmoving, to the banister overlooking the street. There’s no sign his target.  
Sugawara frowns and scans the roof _again_.   
It seems highly unlikely that his target fell forward, he thinks, but he checks the side of the building anyway, and down to the alley, which is, again, very much lacking in dead men.

“Looking for something?” comes a voice behind him.  
Sugawara, hair on the back of his neck standing up in alarm, slowly turns around to see Semi Eita, singer of the Blood Swans, standing a few meters away from him with a hole in his head.  
A small stream of blood leaks from it, travels between his eyebrows and drips down the side of his nose.  
Before Sugawara can fully process this, Semi lunges, shanking him in the side with something long and sharp. The pain sears him out of his shock and Sugawara jumps back, one hand on his abdomen, trying to keep the now bleeding wound closed.  
The singer stands there, looking at him curiously.   
“Does he know?” he asks, and Sugawara can only stare in horror. There is a man standing before him with a hole in his head, and one finger that’s grown to the size of an ice pick, long and bony and, judging by the tear in his side, incredibly sharp.  
“Tendou I mean,” Semi continues, completely ignoring the impossibility of this situation. “You guys have a thing, right? I can smell him on you. Does he know you’re an assassin?”  
Sugawara shakes his head slowly, trying to make the gears in his mind spin faster. It feels like his brain wants to shut down. This man shouldn’t, by any logic in the known universe, be standing there. But that’s what he is doing and just looking at him fills Sugawara with cold dread.   
It gets worse when Semi smiles softly.  
“Good. It would only hurt him to know,” he says, and he moves again.

This time Sugawara is ready.   
He rolls backwards; hissing at the painful stretch of his side, and flicks four knives in Semi’s direction. They hit their target perfectly, one in Semi’s thigh, one in his arm, one in his chest and one in his throat.  
“Damn, you’re pretty good,” Semi says, stopping in his tracks to tug the knife out of his throat. “I take it you’re not going to tell me who hired you?”  
He looks at his opponent expectantly but Sugawara’s mind is busy reeling, eyes scanning this roof for a way out.  
“Didn’t they tell you what you were dealing with?”  
This makes Sugawara blink. The singer cocks his bullet riddled head at him, and it pulls open the knife wound in his throat, skin tearing away from bare flesh.  
This guy, this… thing is not human. And either the boss doesn’t know, or he has neglected to tell Daichi.  
“And right after feeding, too. You really don’t know how this works, do you?” Semi continues. “Oh well.”  
Sugawara’s side really, really hurts and it occurs to him that he’s probably not getting out of here. His eyes follow the hole in Semi’s forehead as it swings left-right-left-right while he shakes his head sadly.  
It’s impossible, Sugawara thinks. What’s happening right now is impossible, but if he wants any hope of making it out of here alive he needs to think.

He was never any good at the close quarter fights. The pressure gets to him.   
That’s why he’s a sniper in the first place.   
He takes a deep breath, sharp pain in his side cutting a clear path through the fog in his head.  
Semi takes a jab at him again, and Sugawara rolls back, dodging the attack until he makes it to the wall of the stairwell.  
The building has two staircases, he knows. The fire escape outside and the stairwell that starts behind him. The elevator goes up to the sixth floor, two floors down from the roof.   
It’s going to be messy but it’s doable. Barely.   
He just needs to distract the other guy.  
Semi stands before him and cracks his neck.  
Sugawara, sitting painfully against the wall, fishes into his jacket pocket.  
“More knives?” Semi asks. He sways a little. Even impossible monsters are susceptible to the neurotoxins Sugawara coats his weapons with, it seems.   
That means Semi might be susceptible to other things, as well.   
Sugawara smiles. He’s not fully out of options. If he can just incapacitate the guy, he may be able to cut his head off or something. It’s gruesome and Sugawara winces at the thought, but he never agreed to this job thinking he’d walk away clean. He does what he needs to do.  
He pulls a small blocky weapon out of his jacket and aims.   
Semi’s eyes go wide as two electrified wires hit his chest.

 

 

Tendou Satori is shoving the last of the trash bags into the container behind his coffee shop, when he hears a small noise, like a firecracker going off.  
He looks up frowning and then the smell hits him.  
Even in this stinking alleyway, it pierces his nose. He’d recognize that smell anywhere, above the stench of urine and rotting milk, above the smell of his roast beans and the sweat of the broken-up encampment. It calls to him above the smoke of trucks and cars, above the sewage, even.  
Semi’s blood.  
Tendou walks out of the alley, sniffing the air.  
And then a buzzing sound makes him look up.

 

 

“You piece of shit.”  
Semi Eita’s muscles go slack and he falls, shuddering, to the floor.  
He’s hurt badly, and the added pain is almost unbearable. He can feel the poison from the knives coursing through his veins, leaving cold glue behind wherever it goes and the fucking taser is only making it worse.  
If Semi hadn’t just fed, he would be dead.  
He’d be impressed, if he wasn’t currently lying twitching on a tarred roof.  
He needs to feed. Now.  
Peering to his side, he sees the assassin struggle to get up. The man is clutching his side and the blood leaking out smells fucking divine.   
He wants him, this stupid bag of meat, he _needs_ him.  
With some difficulty, he pulls out the wires and growls.  
A few metres away, the assassin has sagged back down.  
He’s probably dying, Semi thinks.  
Hopes, even. Because if that dude still has fight in him, they’re both dead.  
Semi shuffles toward his enemy, slower than he would like, but he stops when he hears footsteps race up the fire escape.  
A glance over the side reveals a flash of red hair.  
Of course, Semi thinks, and his heart sinks a bit. This is one situation he doesn’t want to explain to the ex who already hates him.

 

 

Tendou Satori remembers every single life he took.  
The first was a groupie, high on acid, fucked out and willing to be whatever they needed her to be. She'd screamed and cried when he bit her because he’d just turned and none of it was gentle. The need was so great he ended up ripping out her throat and when the fog lifted there was blood everywhere and Tendou felt like some wild beast.   
He'd freaked the fuck out and ran away.   
Yamagata found him the next day, hiding under concrete stairs in an abandoned construction site.  
“That's just how the world works,” Semi had told him. “Some are hunters, and some are prey.”  
And when Tendou explained that he didn’t want to be a hunter, Semi just looked disappointed.

The second life Tendou took was an old man. About seventy, he guessed. It seemed better than the alternatives at the time. A sacrifice of sorts. A full life spent.  
The old man made no sound when he was pulled him into an alley and turned him into a husk.  
Tendou felt sick for weeks afterwards.

The third and last life Tendou took was a kid he'd met in a bar in New York.  
He'd gotten better at it. So much better.   
Through careful experimentation, he had learned that he can exist on about two litres a month. That's one or two hook-ups if he's careful.  
It took some practice to be able to do it. It’s hard to just take sips and leave it at that, every urge in his body trying to drink it all, to empty this vessel before him.   
But he'd gotten better at it.   
Enough to be able to stay in one place. Enough to not have to travel from city to city, country to country, burning through Grindr accounts.   
He'd found something close to balance, Tendou thought. He left them high and slightly weaker, but not dead.  
Not until that night.  
The two of them hooked up, smoked weed and had sex.  
The usual, until the guy was nice and relaxed in his arms, and he punctured the wound.  
This guy's blood had tasted a little different, been a little thinner than what he was used to.  
And when he pulled back, the boy wouldn't stop bleeding.  
In his panic, Tendou had run away again. And part of him still considers it a waste, still dreams of all that blood he could have lapped up instead.

 

Tendou has spent years preparing and practising his own discipline, to make sure that his counter stays on three. But when he reaches the roof of the apartment building, the sheer amount of blood is threatening to overwhelm all of his senses and undo all that hard work.  
Throat parched and vision red, he looks around the blackened tar of the roof. Most of the blood up here is not Semi’s and he can trace it to its original owner, hiding behind an AC unit.  
“Holy shit! Suga?”  
Suga, gorgeous, amazing, _wounded_ Suga sits against the wall clutching his side and Tendou just… panics.  
“Fucking fuck what the hell is going on?”  
“Tendou,” Suga says in a whisper that sounds broken and hurt and causes Tendou to panic even more.  
He looks around, sees the binoculars, sees the girl on the balcony.  
“What are you? A cop? Holy shit.”  
“Tendou, please calm down” Suga says in his soft voice.  
Tendou runs both hands through his hair, tugging the red locks to pull himself together.  
“Did Semi do this? Where is he? Is he coming back? How the fuck did you even survive a fight with him?” he says, and he paces around the roof.  
“Tendou.”  
“Jesus fuck you really don't want to mess with that guy. What the hell are you doing?”  
“Tendou.”  
“I mean, do you even know what you’re up against? What the bloody hell are you?”  
“Satori.”  
Tendou stops in his tracks and the look Suga gives him when he glances up is one of pure pain. Not just physical, but emotional pain. Suga looks at him with fucking pity and regret in his eyes.  
“Please run,” he says, voice way too weak for comfort.  
It makes Tendou feel an awful lot of things at once and none of them is any good. Anger, confusion, complete and utter sadness, and so, so much hunger. He shakes his head in an attempt to clear it.  
“Please,” Suga whispers, “If they find you here you’ll be in trouble.” In the street below, sirens are coming closer.  
“Shitshitshit!” Tendou, trying hard to keep himself from just gorging on his lover, lifts the bleeding Suga up and sprints off, down the stairwell.

 


	5. The Man in the Basement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sugawara loses his shirt.

Sugawara Koushi wakes up in a bare room that smells heavily of coffee beans. There are bandages on his arms and legs, and a very heavy compress on his side. His pain is present, but the edge has been taken off. Painkillers, he supposes.  
A small tube is stuck in his right arm and he follows it up to a bag of blood hanging on a coat rack next to him.  
He feels woozy. The light in here is dim, with one fluorescent lamp at the other end of the room and some blinking lights on the tall, looming machines next to him. They make a soft humming sound. On the side where he lies, most of the light comes from the doorway.   
There are voices outside. Arguing, by the sound of it.  
Sugawara closes his eyes and strains to understand what they’re saying, fighting the sharp protesting sting of his head when he tries to concentrate.

 

“Jesus fucking christ I better get a raise for this,” one voice says. It sounds familiar. “This is against every ethical rule in the book! You shoulda just called an ambulance.”  
“You haven’t taken any Hippocratic oaths yet, grumpy boy,” the second voice says.  
It is without a doubt Tendou and Sugawara feels a pang in his chest. The coffee shop owner sounds extremely tired.  
“I can’t exactly tell them this guy had a very bloody fight on the roof of an office building.”  
“Yes you can! You heard a bang, ran up to help, that sort of thing,” the other one grumbles, “For fuck’s sake, Tendou, I know you like his riding dick but he’s… he’s…”  
“I know,” Tendou answers in a low voice. “I mean it’s fairly clear now, though I didn’t exactly know before.”  
“How do you fuck someone and not see that? Are you into blindfolds or some shit? You know what, no. I take it back. I don’t want to know.”  
“Kawanishi,” Tendou shushes, “I’ll handle it from here. Take a break. Take a day off tomorrow. Take Hana somewhere nice.”  
“Shut up!”  
“All you did was help a wounded man.” Tendou is speaking calmer now, he’s being reasonable, which is a very alien tone of voice for him. “That’s all it is. I’ll take any and all responsibility for the rest.”  
Kawanishi sighs deeply. “I’m out of here,” he says, and footsteps clank up what sounds like an iron staircase.  
“Hey Kawanishi.”  
“What?”  
“Thanks.”  
“Yeah yeah.”

A door slams in the distance and light spills into the room as a figure walks through the doorway.  
Sugawara blinks at Tendou coming closer.  
“Awake, huh?” Tendou says softly. “Feeling better?”  
And Sugawara is suddenly reminded of why he has a tendency to cut and run.   
The redhead has lost most of his mask. There’s no boisterousness here, no cynical jokes. No big grins and exaggerated gestures. Tendou just looks tired. Deflated. Somehow that hurts more than the gaping wound in Sugawara’s side.  
“I can explain,” Sugawara begins.  
“I don’t think I need that much explanation, buddy,” Tendou says, “You fucked up big time by picking Semi as your enemy, is all.”  
Sugawara can only lie back and frown.

 

 

Tendou Satori has terrible luck, it seems. The gorgeous Suga is finally shirtless and while Tendou has wanted to see him with all his clothes off since the day he walked his glorious pin-striped ass into the coffee shop, this is really not the way he’d envisioned it. Moreover, it has now become extremely clear why the guy was so protective of his silk shell.  
Most of Suga’s back is covered with an intricate tattoo of a stylized crow, intertwined with golden thread. Loose feathers spread up and over his shoulders in a detailed pattern that runs from his collarbone to the middle of his upper arm. The whole thing could be covered with a standard t-shirt and Tendou reasons that it almost always is. Even when he’s, uh, sleeping with people.  
In short, Suga couldn’t be more obviously yakuza if he tried.  
Tendou decides to ask anyway.  
“Someone once told me all tattoos have stories attached. You wanna tell me yours?” he says.  
The man in the bed closes his eyes and chuckles.  
“You are very calm about this,” he says.  
Tendou just shrugs. “We all have our problems,” he grunts. “You, for instance, appear to be a criminal.”  
“I guess,” Suga says softly, seriously.  
Tendou watches him sigh in the makeshift cot in his basement and all he can think of is that apparently what he finds attractive is a literal aura of danger.  
There is a pause, before Suga starts talking again. “The crow reminds me to fly,” he says to the ceiling, in a speech that sounds practiced. “To be fast like the wind.”   
And then, in a smaller voice: “And to benefit from those that have fallen before me.”  
“Fitting,” Tendou can’t help but note.  
“The golden threads are what bind me to my companions,” Suga continues.  
“Did you try to murder Semi Eita for these companions?”  
“Are you recording this?” Suga asks. And Tendou laughs, a short, shrill giggle. Even in this state, Suga doesn’t lose his composure. What Tendou wouldn’t give for that amount of self-control.  
“Listen, Suga. Semi… he’s a very hard guy to kill.”  
“I see,” Suga mutters.  
“You probably noticed this already, but he’s not exactly human,” Tendou goes on, trying to slowly form an explanation. It’s too late to back down now, anyway. One way or another, he’ll find out, and Tendou would rather he didn’t find out by having a hungry Semi attached to his neck.  
“What sort of- ?”  
“Vampire,” Tendou interrupts him. “The powerful kind.”  
“How do you know?”  
There is a pause, another silence broken only by the soft hum of the coffee shop's big fridges.  
“He sired me,” Tendou says.

Suga, beautiful, not-so-innocent-as-first-imagined Suga, just blinks at him.  
Holy hell does that hurt.  
Tendou taps the blood bag currently keeping the yakuza assassin alive.  
“It’s from my personal stash,” he says, “Good year, that one.”  
“Oh.”  
It’s all Suga says. He seems to be reeling, slowly letting the knowledge sink in.   
Tendou grabs a stool and takes a seat while he watches Suga’s brain process this new information.  
“You’re like him?” Suga asks eventually.  
Tendou shrugs. “Sorta. Same breed, different disposition. Less powerful, too.”  
Suga looks at him thoughtfully.  
“If you’re a vampire, do you.. um, were you going to…”  
“No,” Tendou stops him before he can finish the thought. “Whatever you saw Semi do, I’m not like that. I don’t kill people and I sure as hell wasn’t planning on doing anything to you.”  
“Why not?”  
“I like you.”  
It comes out before Tendou can stop it. So much for emotional advantage.  
Suga doesn’t seem particularly surprised. He just smiles and rests his eyes back onto the popcorn ceiling.  
“Well this is certainly an interesting situation we got ourselves into,” he muses in his soft, melodious voice.  
“Right?” Tendou says. And it strikes him that he doesn’t know exactly how bad the situation is. Semi lost a lot of blood but he probably wasn't quite dead.  
Which begs the question where the hell he went, and how angry he currently is.

“Do you know, uh, where Semi ran off to?” he tries, but Suga shakes his head slowly.  
“I was a bit busy with the whole dying thing, I’m afraid.”  
“Understandable.”  
Tendou gets up from his chair.  
“Wait right here,” he says.  
Suga raises a single eyebrow, bandaged arm slowly coming up from his mangled chest to brush a lock of hair from his forehead. The blood bag swings at the movement.  
“If you insist.”

  

 

Tendou carefully steps out of the back door to his coffee shop and sniffs the air.  
That is a mistake.  
The stench of blood still hangs over the neighbourhood like a shroud and desire for it fogs up his head. But at least it’s fading.  
He pulls his sleeve over his nose and inhales spilled coffee until he can think again. Then he crosses the street, down the alley next to the concert hall. He passes the stairs going up to the roof and walks on, turning into an even smaller passage between two buildings.  
He follows the trail of Semi's scent like a dog looking for its master.  
It loops around the building, across a street and into another alley.  
This one smells awful, a non-official toilet for the concert hall. But something else is here and Tendou’s heart sinks as he gets closer. It smells of sweat and beer and coffee, and very vaguely of the soap Tendou uses in his shop’s bathrooms.   
It is no longer alive.

“Aw fuck, Wakatoshi,” Tendou says softly, crouching before the body.  
The boy once called Wakatoshi lies in a crumpled heap between two trash cans, fly open and shirt ripped where Semi must have dragged him backwards. Dark bruises bloom on his arms and neck and he looks very, very pale.  
There's something very undignified about it, Tendou thinks. A life so easily taken, a person so easily discarded, like an empty juice box.  
Without even thinking, Tendou takes the body of the late Wakatoshi and lays him on the ground, head propped up on his backpack. He pulls the boy's pants up and closes them. He places his arms next to his side and drapes his jacket over his chest like a blanket.  
Wakatoshi looks almost peaceful, like this.  
“Sorry you got caught up in this, buddy,” Tendou whispers, and he closes the boy's eyelids in a final gesture of goodbye.

 

 

There is a soft, long beep, before the phone clicks and Sugawara Koushi hears a familiar voice.  
“Hey,” it says. “How did it go?”  
“Daichi?” Suga mutters, and he feels his voice break, “Daichi we are in so much trouble.”  
“What's wrong? Are you ok?”  
“I'm... alive, I guess,” Sugawara says, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead. The movement pulls on his side and he hisses at the pain.  
On the other end of the line, Daichi makes a worried noise.  
Sugawara puts his arm back down.  
“Daichi, listen. I need you to pack everyone up and get out of there. Find a hide-out. I fucked up. I don't know if it was intentional or not but the brief was wrong. The mission they gave us, my target... That dude was not even remotely what we anticipated. I'm having a lot of trouble getting my head around what's going on, and I promise I'll explain everything later, but please, for the moment, get out of the office.”  
Daichi is silent for a few seconds.   
“Alright,” he says. “Where are you?”  
“I... think I'm in the basement of a coffee shop,” Sugawara answers.  
“You think?”  
“Look,” he pleads. “Don't worry about me. I'll be ok. I'm safe for now. I need you to worry about yourself first. Please. Go.”  
He clicks off the phone and groans, sinking back in the pillows.

 

 

Tendou Satori sighs deeply and gets up again, following a faint scent through another alley, across a road and into the side entrance of an abandoned building. Someone bashed the door in and he carefully slips through, eyes adjusting to the gloom.  
The place looks like a department store. A high end one, judging by the now broken plaster coronets on the ceiling.   
It must have been ransacked ages ago.   
There's graffiti on the walls, most of the wallpaper has been torn or shredded. Near the entrance Tendou finds a mannequin in the middle of what must have been a bonfire, burned as if it was a 16th century witch.  
Mostly, everything is covered in soot and dust. It makes it real easy to follow the footsteps as they wind through the space, turning around the counter, past empty clothing racks and toward the bottom of a set of elaborately carved double stairs.  
There's obvious signs of a fight here. A dust cloud still hangs in the air and footsteps and scuff marks line the floor. There's red splotches, too, but the scents in this place are too overpowering for Tendou to figure out if they're Semi's blood or someone else's.  
The banister, meanwhile, is sprayed with droplets of a clear, gold liquid.  
Tendou frowns at it. It reminds him of mercury, but with a light yellowy sheen. He briefly wonders whether he should touch it, but decides to sniff instead.  
He quickly pulls his head back. Whatever that is, it's disgusting. It smells vaguely like lemon, but much more pungent, like one of those anti-bug candles or a very cheap household cleaner.  
It smells like poison. Like death and chemicals.

He sees footprints leading up the stairs and follows. More fighting happened on the landing and Tendou is starting to wonder who the hell this second person was, to be able to survive this long.  
Finally he arrives upstairs, where the smell of Semi's blood hangs like a hovering ghost.  
It's hard to see in this room, a cloud of dust obscuring everything, turning mannequins into creeping shadows and broken furniture into looming boulders.  
But one shadow is prominent.  
In the middle of the floor, peering at pools of blood and what Tendou has decided to refer to as 'icky lemon stuff', stands a man.

“He said you'd come,” Yamagata notes quietly, not bothering to turn around.  
“What are you doing here? What the fuck happened? Where is he?” Tendou says.  
“He got hurt.”  
“Yeah, I can tell, Yamagata, his blood is fucking everywhere. ”  
“He said to leave him alone.”  
“Yeah right. When has Semisemi ever wanted to-”  
“I said, leave him alone!” Yamagata phrases every word carefully, laces every edge with spite. “He said to tell you he won't pursue your boyfriend if you leave him be. If both of you leave him be.”  
“Where the hell is he?”  
“Safe,” Yamagata says, and he turns to Tendou with a fierceness that's unusual for the normally calm drummer. “I took him somewhere he can heal. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I'm not gonna let anyone hurt him.”   
“You're gonna take care of him by yourself?”  
Yamagata nearly growls at him. “Like you'll help? I don’t know where your loyalties lie anymore, Tendou. We don't need you. If you come to find him, I will personally kill you.”  
“Jesus fucking christ are you serious?”  
“You abandoned him,” Yamagata says, “I won't.”  
Tendou tilts his head, feeling a sneer creep up his face. He doesn't even try to stop it.  
“Still waiting for your ticket to immortality, are you?” he says, and he spreads his hands out, stretching his long, thin fingers wide like the bones of cobwebs. “Still idolizing the whole ‘creature of the night’ shit?”  
Yamagata huffs. “You don't even realize it, do you?” he whispers, eyes blank and oddly watery.  
“Hmmm?”  
“He loved you.” Yamagata's shoulders sag. “Probably still does. That's why he did it. He's a romantic that way. You were a stupid fucking roadie with the self esteem of a snail and he loved you so much he wanted to elevate you. And you didn't even...”  
“You think being turned into a bloodthirsty monster was a step up somehow?” Tendou raises an eyebrow.  
This makes Yamagata laugh, a short, deep bark. “Like you weren't already scum of the earth, Tendou. I remember where we picked you up. No one wanted you then, but he did.”  
“Way to bring up old history, buddy.” Tendou sighs, and he folds his arms.  
“It's not history to me, Tendou.”  
Yamagata turns and walks around the pool of swirling blood and gold, frowning as he investigates a slash on the wall.  
“Whelp,” Tendou says, “sounds like your life is going sucky, Hayato.”  
“I suppose,” Yamagata says. “But that's how it goes. Like I said, leave him alone. We'll be out of town in a few days anyway, so-”  
He turns to face Tendou again, but finds that the coffee shop owner is no longer there.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi sits up when someone starts shouting in the coffee shop above him.  
He quickly recognizes the voice, though he wishes Noya would think of a different way to cause a diversion.  
Soon enough, footsteps come down the stairs and then the door to his room slowly opens.  
“Asahi?”  
“Hey, we came as soon as we could,” the tall man says, and then: “Oh my god you're hurt!”  
Asahi rushes forward, face a picture of worry.  
“Asahi, I'm fine.”  
“That is not fine! You are not fine! Look at you. Oh my god.”  
“Asahi, please stop shouting,” Sugawara says gently, but he allows his friend to check him over.  
“We need to get you out of here,” Asahi says.  
“No.”  
“What?”  
“I told you guys not to come. I told Daichi I was safe here. Safer, certainly, than wherever you guys are running away to.”  
“What happened?” Asahi asks, face full of worried lines.  
Sugawara sighs. “Look. The mark, that Semi guy. He's not... the briefing wasn't complete,” he says.  
There’s no way in hell he’s telling the rabbit hearted Asahi about horror monsters.  
“There's a chance someone is trying to betray us,” Sugawara adds.  
The thought makes Asahi turn pale.  
“Listen,” Sugawara says patiently. “It’s more of a hunch than anything else, but there's something very fishy going on. Whoever put this contract out, they're-”  
“I know,” Asahi presses. “Oikawa would-”  
“Please tell me you’re staying away from Oikawa,” Sugawara pleads, wide-eyed.  
Asahi presses his lips together into thin lines and nods.   
That man is a terrible, terrible liar.  
“What the hell are you guys planning!” Sugawara hisses. “ I know I fucked up real bad and I'm sorry but there's something weird going on and we really, really need to lay low. Trying to meet the clan head is the very opposite of laying low!”  
“Well Daichi has some kind of plan,” Asahi says, looking mildly hurt. “He says we need to figure out where the contract is coming from, so we can make reparations to the right people. We got it from one of Shirabu's subordinates. He just has to figure out if it goes higher up the ladder.”  
“By confronting Oikawa?” Suga's voice goes squeaky with the effort of trying to whisper through a panic.  
“It'll be fine,” Asahi says, but his face betrays the thought that it will probably not be fine at all.  
At least Asahi thinks it won’t. Asahi is not the world’s most trusting person.

Sugawara lies back down and tries to keep his breath steady.  
He needs to think.  
“I saw a back door on my way down,” Asahi says, scanning the room. “I can probably carry you out, but it'll be painful.”  
“I told you, I'm not going,” Sugawara says. “I'm in no position to be moved, and I'm fairly safe here.”  
“You trust them? Whoever brought you here?” Asahi says incredulously.  
Suga makes a face. “Trust is... a big word, but I don't think he's going to hurt me. This place isn't linked to us or to anyone in the Aoba clan, so I should be ok. Besides, I'd only slow you down.”  
“You know Daichi doesn’t like the idea of running,” Asahi says offhandedly.  
“Well I don’t like the idea of each and every one of you being executed, but that’s just me,” Sugawara grumps.  
Asahi sighs. “Well ok. We thought you might be like that, so I brought you something.”  
He fishes around in the inside of his suit jacket and pulls out a small paper package, no larger than his palm.  
“Asahi, I’m not about to-”  
“Please?” Asahi says, shoving it in Sugawara’s hand and closing his fingers around it. “Just in case.”  
Upstairs, Noya seems to be done yelling.  
“I need to go,” Asahi says. “Be safe, ok?”

 

 

A few blocks away, Tendou Satori slips out of the abandoned department store and walks two kilometers to an all-night call shop, where he reports the body of Ushijima Wakatoshi.  
When he comes back into the coffee shop, it's nearly three.  
He finds Goshiki worn out and sleepy, sitting in front of a math book, blinking into space.  
“Sorry I took so long, bud,” Tendou says, and the boy startles. “Everything ok?”  
“We had some... difficult customers,” Goshiki says diplomatically.  
“O... k...?” Tendou says. “Let me know when they come back, I'll ban them.”  
He sidles behind the counter and makes himself a drink.  
“I'll pay for the overtime, get your ass to bed.”  
Goshiki nods and goes into the back while his boss sags into a chair.  
The place is nearly empty, save for the goth kids in a corner reading.  
“Will, uh, Kawanishi be ok?” the young barista asks when he comes back out, buttoning his coat. “He seemed, uh, upset. I know it's not my place but if you had a fight I could-”  
“He'll be fine.” Tendou pats him on the shoulder and the boy nods, wrapping a scarf around his neck.  
Tendou leans back and sniffs his coffee, trying to forget the smells of horrible shit he's experienced today. When he looks up, Goshiki is still there, fidgeting and looking at his feet.  
“What?”  
“So, uh, we have a lot of, uh, donuts leftover, and I was thinking...”  
“Take’em,” Tendou says, sipping from his mug. “There's two gallons of milk in the kitchen fridge that are expiring tomorrow, too.”  
“Yes sir!” Goshiki says, eyes sparkling.  
“Just hurry and get some sleep, you idiot.”  
“Sir!”


	6. A Shadow in the Office

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sugawara has to rely on others.

Sugawara Koushi wakes to movement and the soft sound of a chair scraping on the tiles. When he opens his eyes, Tendou is sitting next to his bed, leaning back with a mug of... something.  
“Is that coffee?” he asks.  
“Yeah,” Tendou says, holding out the mug, “want some?”  
Sugawara shakes his head and painfully grabs the water bottle by his bed instead. He takes small sips and then turns to his visitor again.  
“Is it always actual coffee?” he asks.  
Tendou shrugs, glances at the bag on the coat rack. “Not always,” he admits.  
“So how does the vampire thing work?” Sugawara says, putting the water back. “Is it the sunlight and stakes and garlic thing? Your skin doesn't feel particularly cold. You're warm, even, if I remember correctly.”  
Tendou makes a low snorting sound. “Suga, I am hurt and deeply saddened that you pass up the chance to call me hot,” he says.  
“Sorry, sorry,” Sugawara smiles, sinking back into the pillows.   
He pauses and looks at Tendou again. “Did you die?” he asks softly.  
“Fucked if I know,” Tendou grumbles. “And before you ask: no, I don't sleep in coffins and shit. You've seen my apartment, that is my actual bed. It's comfy. And I certainly don't sparkle, though I could probably make that work.” He stretches out an arm, turning it this way and that.  
“You'd be fabulous,” Sugawara nods, and this makes Tendou giggle.  
“It's more like... a mutation,” he says after a while. “My body can take a lot of damage and it can do some weird stuff, and in exchange I need human blood. It's pretty specific in that regard. I tried living on rats for a while. It didn't go well.”  
Sugawara frowns, considers the option and then tries to put that image away again.  
“In short, I'm a monster,” Tendou says. “Sorry to disappoint.”  
Sugawara just chuckles. “Aren't we all?”  
“I dunno, I'm pretty classic movie monster material,” Tendou says.

Sugawara looks away and stares at the ceiling.  
“How many people did you kill, being this monster, Tendou?”  
“Three.”  
“Three?”  
He nods grimly, but Sugawara grins, then chuckles, then start laughing until his chest hurts and Tendou's warm hand is on his shoulder.  
“Jeesh, are you ok?”  
“I'm fine,” Sugawara says. “I'm sorry to startle you. I didn't mean to make light of... that.”  
“You're weird as hell, dude.”  
“I am, aren't I?” Sugawara says and he looks up.  
Tendou's staring at his mug, frowning. His face has fallen, jester persona completely gone. He looks sad and lonely, guilt riddling him like maggots inhabiting old wood.  
Sugawara's fairly certain it will make him crumble one day.  
“I don't know if it's any consolation,” Sugawara says softly, “But I don't think you're as bad as you think you are.”  
“I'm not sure what to do with that information, coming from you,” Tendou says.  
Sugawara nods and listens to the hum of the fridges.   
“Suga?” Tendou says.  
“Hmm?”  
“Do I want to know your number? Kills, I mean.”  
Sugawara shakes his head. “Probably not.”  
Tendou, next to him, leans back, rolls his neck.  
“Hey Suga?”  
“Yes?”  
“If you hurt any of my people...”  
“I won't,” Sugawara says.   
When he looks to his side, Tendou is peering at him, eyes in a half squint, as if he's trying to read him like a book with print that is too fine.   
“I won't,” he says again. “I owe you guys my gratitude, remember? Honour and all that.”  
Tendou's eyebrows knit together and he looks down at Sugawara for a moment.   
Then he nods and gets up, walking out the door without another word.   
Sugawara sighs and closes his eyes again.

 

 

A man in a black raincoat carefully steps through the door to the abandoned department store.  
He looks around, listening for sounds, before he pulls out a small flash-light.  
The beam skitters across the floor, the counter, the empty clothing racks and the mannequin burnt at the stake. It lands on several sets of footsteps in the dust and the man follows them, up the stairs.  
He stops by the banister and pulls out a pair of rubber gloves, swiping at the metallic liquid splashed across the wood.  
He sniffs it and makes a face, then he continues up.  
At the top of the stairs he stops, blinking slowly at the pool of liquid lying there. It looks like blood, red and viscous, swirled with gold until the whole thing resembles an abstract piece of art.  
He crouches by the pool and takes a few vials out of his coat.  
Carefully, as if he's handling explosives, he scoops up some of the liquid.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi wakes with a dull ache in his side and a throbbing in his head.   
He opens his phone. Eight thirty.   
Tendou must have gone home now, he assumes. There’s a tray on the chair by his bed that holds a bowl of cold oatmeal and a scone. Sorry. ‘Scone of Mercy’.   
With some difficulty, he sits up and dials the first number on his contact list.  
“Tell me you’re not going to do something stupid,” he says as soon as Daichi picks up.  
Daichi groans.  
“Promise me.”  
“You won’t like this plan, Suga. I’m not going to lie to you.”  
Sugawara whines.  
“We need to find out where the contract is coming from if we’re going to handle any of the damage.”  
“Daichi, you don’t understand,” Sugawara presses. “The target… I didn’t want to tell Asahi, but that dude is not human, ok? I shot him right between the eyes and _he_ _got back up_.”  
“What?”  
“Look, Daichi, this is so far over our heads I can’t even process it and I was _there._ Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. If you approach this the wrong way, they’re going to _kill you._ ”  
Daichi pauses, breathes deeply. “I’m aware.”  
“Daichi, just lay low. Please?”  
“Suga, you’re going to have to let me handle this. I have a pretty good idea. It’ll be fine.”  
“Daichi.”  
“Trust me.”  
Sugawara sighs, chest aching.   
“Always.”  
“Good man,” Daichi says. “Now, are you sure you don’t want us to pick you up? Did Asahi deliver your package?”  
“Yes. I didn't need that, but yes,” Sugawara says, fishing under his pillow for the parcel. “And I'm fine here. I’ll only slow you guys down.”  
“Let me know if you change your mind, ok? If your host becomes dodgy.”   
Sugawara feels his throat constrict.   
“I’m just not sure if I’m willing to trust a random coffee shop owner, alright?” Daichi continues. “So let me know the moment you have doubts.”  
“Mmm,” Sugawara hums.  
“Anyway, I gotta go.”  
“Be careful,” Sugawara mutters.  
“Don’t worry,” the voice on the other line soothes. “You’ve always been the reliable one, Suga. Rely on us for a change, ok?”  
The call clicks off and Sugawara puts the phone down, suddenly feeling very lonely.  
It's been a long time since he was quite this lost.   
He's supposed to know what to do in situations like this.

He's the one who deals with them, after all.   
Has always been the one to handle it. Since the very first time.   
They were fifteen. All three of them. Asahi the eldest. Only by a few months.  
And they'd been locked up in a room to prove their allegiance.  
There was a chair. Metal and wood. And Sugawara remembers that it reminded him of the ones they have in schools. He hadn't been in a proper classroom for years, by that point, but he remembers how weird it felt to see it there. How out of place it was.  
A classroom chair.  
A tied up woman with a bag over her head sitting on it.  
Crying.  
Of course.  
And Asahi had always been slated as the muscle. He is taller, more beefy looking than the other two. Even at fifteen he could easily pass for an adult, a gangster. His mere presence had saved Sugawara and Sawamura's ass countless times.  
From gangs, from pimps. From anyone that could easily be scared off with a menacing look.  
Asahi had gotten them out of trouble so many times that it seemed only natural when he picked up the gun and aimed it, Sawamura looking at the ground and Sugawara turning his back, shielding his ears for a sound that never came.  
When he turned around, Asahi was shaking, slowly sinking to his knees.  
"Asahi?"  
Sawamura walking toward him, the woman sobbing and it was then that Sugawara made his decision, that he stepped up, gently took the gun from Asahi’s trembling hand and pulled the trigger.  
He hit the woman in the thigh and she screamed, begged, pleaded for her life.  
So he shot her again, and again, and again. Until the room was silent.  
Ever since then, Sugawara has known what to do. Known how to keep them safe, away from the mess and the sin.  
Has done what needs to be done.  
He really fucked up this time, didn't he?

 

 

Tendou Satori enters his apartment and flings himself onto the couch.  
“Urgh.”  
He breathes deeply and closes his eyes, waiting for his thoughts to stop churning.  
He’s so fucked.   
So fucked.   
The man he’s been obsessing about is a cold blooded killer, and the cold blooded killer he was obsessing about ten years ago is possibly dying, despite being immortal.  
Just how fucking bad can his taste in men get?  
And now he has a yakuza hitman in his basement who may or may not try to murder everyone who’s seen him, which isn't that much of a problem for Tendou, but might be for Kawanishi, who is an asshole but also very squishy.  
And on top of all that, he’s been feeling… weird.  
He lifts his arm and looks at his hand. He could swear his fingers are longer than usual.  
His tongue involuntarily runs over his teeth, and snags at the canines.  
Frowning, he gets off the couch and enters the bathroom. In front of the mirror, he lifts his lip. His teeth are elongated. Two sharp pointy fangs.  
They’re not supposed to be there. Not when he’s not feeding.   
Not at all, really, but it’s a bit late to lament that now.   
It’s very vampire. Not a look he likes on himself.  
If he were a movie character, this would be the point where he smashes the mirror to show his inner turmoil and stare at his reflection in the shards, horrified at what he’s become.   
But he’s not in a movie, and he’ll lose his security deposit if he starts breaking shit in here, so he just sighs and takes off his clothes. He steps into the shower, letting the hot water run over him until he feels mildly more like himself again.  
  


 

 

The building is an eye sore. It's shaped like a broken column, going straight up before slanting towards a point. It's made of glass and polished granite, a giant gravestone rising towards the sky.  
A black car stops in front of it.  
"Stay here, Asahi," Sawamura says, “start the engine as soon as you see us come back out.”   
And he gets out of the back seat.  
With a small gesture, he beckons Nishinoya and Tanaka to come with him.  
They climb granite steps and head through large double doors to approach the receptionist.  
"Sawamura Daichi," he tells the girl, “I have an audience.”  
“Of course, sir,” the receptionist nods. “Please follow me, though I must ask your colleagues to stay here.”  
“Certainly,” Sawamura smiles pleasantly. He nods to his men and follows the click of her heels down the hall, to a private elevator. The girl punches in a key code and the doors roll open.  
“He is waiting for you at the top, sir.”  
Sawamura bows and enters, the lift swallowing him with a small ding.  
The elevator opens again on the 31st floor, right below the penthouse.  
Sawamura's breath is calm, his eyes keenly glancing around.  
It's warm here, and unpleasantly humid. A strange scent that Sawamura can't quite place permeates everything, nestling in his hair, crawling in his clothes and sinking into his very pores.  
Sawamura scrunches up his face and cracks his neck before taking a step forward.  
The hallway he's in is lit with a few dozen candles, scented ones. They blanket the air with the smell of eucalyptus, but they can't fully mask the other smell. Tangy. Vaguely rotten.  
Combined with the unpleasant moisture and heat, it makes the place feel like a badly maintained bathhouse.  
One where everyone has turned off the lights.

Sawamura huffs and walks through the hallway, stopping to knock on the double doors at the end.  
A tall man in a suit opens them.  
“You are expected,” he says.  
The next room is a dark haze and Sawamura follows the man through it. The space probably takes up about half of the floor, from what Sawamura knows of the building's lay-out. But instead of an army of cubicles, it is occupied by a maze of thin, darkly coloured gauze drapes. Thick curtains hang before the large glass windows, blocking out most of the light.  
Candles dot the floor and swing from the ceiling. Shadows move beyond the veils, weird shapes lingering in the distance.  
A thick steam seems to fill the air.  
The strange smell is stronger here, but the eucalyptus is almost overpowering now.  
Droplets of water cling to Sawamura's hair and he coughs, the heavy air invading his lungs. It almost feels like he's drowning.

“Sawamura,” a voice calls from one of the darker corners of the room.  
He bows. “Mister Shirabu,” he says. “I was told I would be seeing mister Oikawa.”  
“He does not wish to see you,” the voice answers, softly, and Sawamura takes a step closer, squinting at the gloom until the large bodyguard steps in front of him.  
"You want to tell me what's going on?" Sawamura says.  
“Your man messed up,” Shirabu drawls, and there is movement in the shadows.  
As Sawamura's eyes adjust to the dark, he can make out a large desk.  
“You know we've never failed a mark before,” he says.  
“Well you did this time.” Shirabu sounds cold, unfeeling, but he does not sound angry.  
“Is there a reason I'm not talking to Oikawa himself to offer my apologies? I would appreciate the opportunity to explain my circumstances,” Sawamura says.  
“He'd kill you.”  
“I do believe I have a case, mister Shirabu,” Sawamura presses on. “The mark was not a normal man.”  
“What makes you say that?”  
“Because Sugawara believes it, and I trust him.”  
There is a small but violent motion and briefly, Shirabu's hand rests on the desk. In the light of a candle, Sawamura notices it's bandaged.  
He draws himself up.  
"You weren't expecting him to survive, were you?" he says, fist clenched behind his back.  
"What an idiotic thing to say, Sawamura," Shirabu answers. "If your man is making up stories to excuse his own failures, that is hardly my business.”  
Shirabu's hand retreats into the darkness and the shadow leans back.  
“I'm disappointed, Karasuno boy. Your group comes with high praise. I expect you to do the job you were given."  
"And I expect a brief that doesn't leave out important details," Sawamura growls.  
"Your assassin made a mistake, Sawamura. You don't have to try and divert the blame."  
"Let me speak to Oikawa," Sawamura says again.  
"I don't think that will be necessary," Shirabu says, "You are dismissed."  
"Shirabu!"  
The bodyguard takes a step towards Sawamura.  
"I'll be lenient and give you two more weeks,” Shirabu's voice says. “Find your target. Clear your name. Bring me his head. I don't think I need to tell you what will happen if you fail twice."  
The bodyguard gestures at Sawamura and he turns around, walking back through the stifling heat and steam.

When the elevator doors open to the ground floor, Sawamura takes a deep breath of fresh, mildly clean air.  
He wipes the sweat from his brown and blinks at the shouts coming from the entrance.  
He jogs toward the lobby, where Nishinoya is screaming, held back by an overworked Tanaka.  
The subject of his tirade is a broad shouldered man with spiky hair. There's a coat on his arm and a mildly baffled expression on his face.  
"We looked it up, man! He's been going since the seventies!,” Nishinoya yells, “Doesn't look a day over 25! You wanna tell me what you're setting us up for, huh? You fucking-"  
"Nishinoya!" Sawamura barks, and the younger man shuts his mouth, a low growl stuck in his throat.  
Sawamura crosses the entrance hall and bows deeply. “My apologies, mister Iwaizumi. I humbly ask you to excuse my subordinate. He has a very... short fuse.”  
Iwaizumi nods. “I can see that,” he says. “Try to keep him in check, will ya.”  
“I will, I will,” Sawamura smiles. “He's a handful, but he's loyal, you know.”  
“Mmm,” Iwaizumi hums and Nishinoya finally stops squirming, now hanging limply from Tanaka's arms.  
“Trust is so hard to come by these days, but so important,” Sawamura goes on, glancing at his superior as he walks by him. “As you no doubt know. Wouldn't want anyone to start pulling strings to stab you in the back.”  
Iwaizumi says nothing, face impassive while Nishinoya is put back on the ground.  
“Noya?” Sawamura intones.  
“I'm sorry, mister Iwaizumi,” Nishinoya bows. Iwaizumi just nods.  
“My sincerest apologies, as well, mister Iwaizumi,” Sawamura adds, “I do hope we haven't inconvenienced you. I wish you a pleasant day. Both you and our new clan leader, of course.”  
Iwaizumi's brow twitches just a little, but he returns the bow and then turns on his heel, walking toward the elevator.  
Sawamura smiles apologetically at the receptionist and drags his partners outside, into the waiting car.  
"Do you think that worked?" Nishinoya says, putting on his seatbelt.  
"It's... not the most subtle thing we've ever done,” Sawamura concedes.  
“Well, let's hope he took the bait," Tanaka grins.  
“They'll have to. We pretty much outstayed our welcome here for now.”

 

 

Tendou Satori checks his phone for the third time and grumbles.  
Nine pm. Four past nine, even.   
The evening shift begins at eight.  
He puts the device away and pours tea into a large paper cup.   
“One Chai Division for Kageyama?” he says.  
“Here.” A kid with sleek black hair and too many facial piercings comes up to the counter to pick up his drink. They’re wearing too tight jeans and a long, thick grey sweater Tendou’s fairly certain they could drown in.  
“Oh, and a muffin.”  
“Hmmm?” Tendou says with his head tilted, one hand exaggeratedly curled around his ear as he eyes the kid expectantly.  
Kageyama rolls their eyes. “One Dropkick Muffin please. Blueberry.”  
“Of course.” Tendou grabs the pastry while Kageyama puts some coins on the counter. “Here you are.”  
They walk back to their friends and Tendou drops onto a stool, pouting.  
“Goshiki isn't usually this late, is he?” Eri says, coming out of the kitchen.  
Tendou shakes his head. “I don't like it.”  
“Maybe he's just sick?”  
“He's not picking up his phone,” Tendou points out.  
“He could have dropped it somewhere. Or turned it on silent and overslept.”  
Tendou leans on the counter, head sitting on both hands. “Well he's going to get shouted at when he shows up,” he grumps.

Goshiki does not show up, and Eri leaves at ten, so Tendou covers the evening shift by himself.  
Kawanishi has taken advantage of the offered day off to put as much distance as possible between him and any wounded yakuza hitmen.  
Tendou can't really blame the guy, but it still annoys him, because it means he doesn't have time to check on his guest himself.  
To keep an eye on him or to bask in his presence, Tendou hasn't decided yet.  
Possibly both.  
To make matters worse, it's not even a busy night. It's just him and the goth kids in the corner, a long stretch of sitting at the counter reading bad fiction interrupted by the occasional drunk and, at one point, a couple of cops in need of caffeine.

Tendou goes through a stack of 'depressed' playlists and picks out some Goethes Erben.  
He looks up when one of the goth kids approaches him. The tall blond one, with the sneer. Compared to his friends, this one looks positively preppy. Black slacks, ironed black buttoned up shirt and even a weird red leather tie thing. Just combined with eye liner and red nail polish.  
“Cult Brew please,” he says in a monotone. “And about that music...”  
“Fuck off about the music,” Tendou says, not looking up from making his drink. He’s really not in the mood to get into a discussion on the merits and fakeness of certain bands.  
The kid stills for a moment. “I like it,” he says. “Don't understand a word of it, but I like it.”  
“It's very deep, I can assure you,” Tendou grins and the boy just raises an eyebrow.  
Tendou writes the band name on the paper cup and hands the boy his drink.

 

 

When the morning crew finally comes in, Tendou slinks off into the basement. He finds Suga, beautiful, cold, _lying_ Suga, sleeping in the makeshift cot next to the fridges.  
The assassin opens his eyes and his long lashes flutter, like he's some kind of fairytale princess.  
Tendou sighs and opens the med kit. “Kawanishi isn't coming until later, so I'm gonna have to help clean your wounds.”  
Suga hums, and he sits up painfully.  
“So I've been thinking,” Tendou says, “who hired you to kill Semi?”  
“Someone in the hierarchy.”  
Tendou just blinks at him.  
“I'm not in the business of asking questions, Satori,” Suga says and the familiarity of the name stings a little.  
“Did they tell you why he needs to die?” Tendou tries, “Or is that also not important to you?”  
Suga shrugs. “He apparently killed someone's favourite hostess or prostitute or something.”  
“That makes no sense,” Tendou says, pulling a small pair of scissors out of the plastic box.  
“Why not? He kills a bunch of people, doesn't he? I saw him hurt that girl.”  
Tendou pulls up a tiny corner of the tape holding down the bandages on Suga's side, and slips the blade of the scissors underneath.  
“He doesn't go to clubs or hookers. He doesn't need to,” Tendou says.  
He glances at his patient, who is frowning into the middle distance, and then makes the first cut, carefully tearing through the tape that's wrapped around Suga's abdomen. Suga makes a face, but says nothing.  
“Blood Swans attracts a certain crowd,” Tendou says conversationally. “He plays around with the whole vampire mystique, the blood play. Some of the groupies he attracts, they'll do anything.”  
Suga tilts his head at him as Tendou tugs on the tape.  
“Did you know that Semi doesn't even sing, half the time?,” he says in an effort to distract himself from the smell of blood, freshly bubbling up from this gorgeous man's broken body, “He lights a cigarette, takes off his shirt and recites poetry, and it’s all he needs for throngs of adoring fans to throw themselves at him.”  
Suga chuckles, then hisses as the tapes is pulled off his skin.  
“Tell me if I need to go slower,” Tendou murmurs.  
“It's fine.”

Suga blinks up at him, obviously fighting the pain, and static runs across Tendou's chest.  
Light haired and unobtainable. Tendou was never all that different from those groupies, now that he thinks about it. Because he used to worship Semi like a god, even if he was always just Semi: enchanting, aloof, heartbreakingly beautiful and dead inside.   
Tendou found out that last part when the both of them got drunk one night and ended up in bed together.  
Semi had promised him a place where he would finally belong, but what he took was any semblance of innocence. It never stopped Tendou from loving him, of course, he loved him so hard he would have given his life for him.  
And now his stupid heart is sending him through this shit all over again.

“Earth to Tendou,” Suga whispers and Tendou realizes that he has distracted himself enough to have taken off all the tape. All that's left is the actual compress.  
He's an idiot, he thinks, and he looks into the hazel eyes of a not-really-angel.  
“This is gonna hurt.”  
“I know,” Suga nods.  
With one hand, Tendou holds his nose closed, and with the other he slowly tears off the compress.  
Suga gasps in apparent agony as strings of disinfectant and bits of skin and dried blood come off to reveal a healing but still very open wound.  
It glistens, blood pooling up in rivets, oozing its way through yellow smears of ointment, and Tendou has to look away to swallow down the saliva gathering in his mouth.  
He hates himself. So much.  
Avoiding Suga's gaze, he takes a pair of tongs and picks up a cotton ball, dipping it in disinfectant and wiping around the wound to clean it up a little. It looks like Kawanishi did a good job, all things considered. There's no pus, the liquid bubbling up runs clear.  
Suga's fingers come into view, carefully tracing the edges of flesh, smoothing and pushing down so more wound fluid comes up.  
Tendou stares. Suga's pupils contract, lips thin and white from being pressed together.  
“You ok there?” Tendou asks when Suga retreats his hands, looking at his now stained yellow fingers with interest.  
“Mmhmm,” Suga says with some effort. “You?”  
Tendou nods. “I think it's best if you lie down for this.”

 

 

Sugawara Koushi lies back while an apparent vampire smears something cold around his wound.  
The pain is sharp, edged like glass, but it's doable. Nothing he can't handle.  
He closes his eyes and lets the sensation cut through the fuzz in his head.  
He has to think, he knows. He needs a clear head and a good plan.  
The disinfectant inches closer to his wound, stinging, and he hisses.  
“Sorry,” Tendou mutters softly, and Sugawara hums.  
Semi not having anything to do with prostitutes is... worrying, he thinks. Not in the least because it would mean the reasoning behind his contract is false, which opens up all kinds of possibilities. The one shining brightest, and the one he likes the least, is that whoever ordered the hit knew exactly what they were doing.  
That's an elaborate way to get rid of a single hit man, Sugawara thinks.  
But perhaps it's more than that. Maybe they're being used as pawns in some convoluted plot.  
Maybe someone is trying to make Karasuno lose reputation. A bid for power, a way to curry favor with a new leader. Who even knows?  
But Sugawara has worked so _hard_ for this. To get them where they are. _  
_When he got taken in by old man Ukai all those years ago, Karasuno were 'fallen crows'. Once a big, powerful organization, now reduced to picking up street kids to pad their numbers.  
But the old man had been pretty clear on what he needed even then: a name that strikes fear into the heart of your opponents.  
It has taken so long for them to climb back up the side of that hole, to be feared again, seen again.   
If all that is just going to shatter...

“Can I ask you a question,” Tendou says, gently pushing down a clean compress.  
Sugawara blinks, momentarily distracted. “Yeah?”  
“How does one become an assassin? Like do you one day just decide that you're good at shooting ducks on the fairground and like, shrug, may as well make money shooting dudes?”  
Sugawara groans. “Jeez, could you be any more blunt?”  
“Probably,” Tendou says, taping the compress down.  
Sugawara smiles at the ceiling and lies silent while Tendou finishes.  
“I have a blood brother,” he finally says.  
“That a yakuza thing?” Tendou grunts, and he starts packing up the med kit.  
“Yes. It's like... family that you actually choose. Having a brother that actually deserves to be your kin.”  
“With ya so far,” Tendou says.  
“And this blood brother of mine... he's ambitious. He's smart. He never gives up. He's good with people, too.”  
Tendou sits down on a chair by the bed and sips from his mug, nodding at him to continue.  
“I promised him years ago that I would do anything for him.”  
“And this 'anything' involves murder.”  
“I do the dirty work,” Sugawara admits. “D-, my brother should never lower himself to that level. I don't want him to. He talks to people. He’s talented like that. He recruits and trains and plans. We have a few people who are very good at certain things. Me, I’m pretty mediocre, all things considered, so I... Well I make sure we have the reputation to go along with it. Few would dare mess with us. It's a good way to keep our family members safe.”  
“So where are they now? I half expected a bunch of gangsters to barge in here picking up their lost little lamb.”  
Sugawara chuckles. “It's safer for everyone involved if people don't know where I am,” he says.  
“Well,” Tendou sighs, “that's some self-sacrificial bullshit right there. The 'leave me behind to save yourself' shtick, but also the whole 'I'll do the dirty work' thing. Like, come on, dude.”  
“It's true that I don't enjoy it,” Sugawara says quietly, “But it's also true that I'm... decent at it.”  
He carefully eyes his host, but Tendou shows no sign of shock. He's busy frowning into his maybe-coffee.  
“I dunno, have you considered becoming a greengrocer?” he says.  
“I have, actually,” Sugawara laughs. “Or more specifically, a florist.”  
Tendou glances at him over his drink.  
“It's just that it was never an option, where I come from.”  
The coffee shop owner hums and it's quiet for a while. Sugawara stares at the ceiling.   
He wonders, not for the first time, what lies underneath Tendou's frown.   
He still can't read the coffee shop owner, but he's starting to figure him out.   
That probably goes both ways.   
They carefully skirt around each other's edges. Two dangerous predators dropped inside an arena. Circling, watching.   
But Sugawara isn't afraid. Not really.  
For all Tendou's self-proclaimed monstrousness, Sugawara feels almost safe in the company of this strange man. Trusting, even.

“Tendou?” he asks after a while.  
“Mm?”  
“I realize I've been imposing on you for a while now, but could I ask you for another favour?”  
Tendou tilts his head. “What would that be?”  
“Princess,” Sugawara says, and he worries his bottom lip. “She hasn't been fed since...”  
“Hoo boy.”  
“I would ask someone from my family, but if what you say about Semi is true, we're probably being set up.”  
Tendou raises an eyebrow. “So you're asking me to go to a yakuza monitored apartment to feed a cat.”  
Sugawara opens and closes his mouth wordlessly. “That does sound awful now that you put it like that.”  
“I'll do it,” Tendou shrugs.  
“I...”  
“Ain't your kitty's fault, is it?” Tendou says, “or is this the mastermind-behind-everything type cat. Is the cat your blood brother?”  
“She's a _she,”_ Sugawara says indignantly.  
“Right. So where is this place?”

 

 

On the roof of a bland fifties style apartment building stands a man in a black raincoat.  
He's huddled against a chimney in an effort to stay out of the cold, but the wind still plays with the smoke coming off his cigarette, threatening at any moment to put it out.   
In the street below, there's the slam of a metal door and he looks up, watching the red-headed owner of the coffee shop set off into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Pun help:**
> 
> _Scone of Mercy: Scone - Sisters of Mercy_   
>  _Chai Division: Chai tea – Joy Division_   
>  _Dropkick Muffin: Muffins – Dropkick Murphys_   
>  _Cult brew: Cold brew coffee – The Cult_


	7. A Hungry Princess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a cat.

Tendou Satori puts the key in the lock and is immediately greeted with a loud meow.  
Hungry princess, he thinks, and he opens the door to Suga's apartment.  
A white fluffy creature walks into the hallway and stops, eyes wide, when she notices that the man with the plastic bags at the door is not, in fact, the usual hoomin.  
“Just your friendly neighbourhood coffee vendor, kitty,” Tendou says cheerfully, and he closes the door while the cat flees. “I'm just here to provide noms.”  
Well, to provide noms and also to have a look at Suga's apartment. He's not even going to pretend like he doesn't want to know more about mystery assassin man.  
Tendou steps into the hall and looks around for a kitchen.  
The apartment is fairly big. Certainly a lot more expensive than his.  
“Killing people pays well, huh,” says a nasty voice in the back of his head. He pushes it back down.  
No family photos on the wall, he notices as he shuffles through the hallway, but there is art, and not the kind you buy at Ikea. He frowns at something that looks like an elaborately crocheted abstract painting, before taking the bags through a door and dropping them onto one of those fancy big wooden farm tables.  
The kitchen is... surprisingly cosy. Tendou isn't sure what he was expecting, maybe something minimalist or camo-themed, but it certainly wasn't this.  
The place is sleek and clean, yes, but obvious work has been put into making it look nice. There's a fancy fridge and even one of those professional looking double gas ranges. Tendou wonders if this means that Suga spends a lot of time cooking.  
Possibly just wishes he could spend time cooking.  
Above the classy stove, there's a whole bunch of open shelving featuring modern, expensive looking crockery and pretty copper pots. On a large set of shelves by the window lives a jungle's worth of extremely well taken care of plants.  
“Florist, huh,” Tendou mutters to himself.  
He finds the cat's food bowl - it says 'Princess' on it because of course it does - and fills it.  
“Come on kitty, come get your food,” he coos.  
His answer is a mournful mewl. In the doorway to the living room, the cat sits on her haunches, looking unsure.  
“You’re not used to visitors, are you?” Tendou says, stared down by the cat.  
“Right, I'ma just... go over there,” he nods, and he gets up to find the bedroom.

For clothes, he tells himself. Not to check out the porn that Suga is into or anything.  
Clean clothes. Maybe a pair of pyjamas.  
It takes a few tries – a hallway closet, the bathroom – before he finds what he’s looking for.  
The bedroom is a bit messy. The bed is unmade and has more blankets and quilts than Tendou would give Suga credit for. Every single one of them is covered in white cat hair.   
There's a few books on the bedside table.  
Thrillers. No porn.  
Tendou pouts and sneaks a glance under the bed. Nothing.  
So he sighs and opens the closet.  
A neat row of differing and familiar shirts greets him, with a crisp stack of pants to the side. He messes around in the drawers to find several pairs of multi-coloured socks and boxers. There’s a superman themed one, too.  
He snorts and packs them, together with a clean outfit.  
He finds no silk pyjamas or secret gun compartments, but there is an old pair of sweatpants and a comfy looking hoodie which, while completely out of character, will probably do just fine for Suga's purposes of being a wounded man in a bed.  
A clatter in the kitchen tells him that Princess has given up her fear of strange men in favour of flaked tuna and tilapia chunks in gravy.  
Tendou decides to give her some more time, so he walks down the hall, into the bathroom, where he cleans out the litterbox.  
“Phewww, the things I do for your boss, kitty cat.”

When he's done and gets to investigate the living room, Princess is sitting in the doorway, eyeing him with interest.  
Tendou takes a seat. The couch is nice. In fact, the whole place is surprisingly nice.  
There's a lot of landscapes on the wall. There are still lives and colourful art thingies. There are more plants. The rug is soft and the lamps probably match the furniture. Tendou doesn't know or care enough about decorating to verify, but it seems like Suga would make sure they do, at least.  
Next to the TV are some pictures of Princess and another cat.  
Those are all the photos he has, Tendou realizes.  
No humans.  
No selfies of the beautiful Suga on the beach. No photos of retro family holidays in bad Christmas sweaters, no ancient wedding pictures from grandparents, and if this blood brother is a thing, his image is certainly nowhere to be seen.  
Tendou sits on the couch in Suga's cozy cocoon of an apartment and feels inexplicably sad.  
The place is lovely. Much more lovely than it should be, and it feels like a man desperately spinning a shell for himself, a carefully crafted refuge away from everything he does for a living.

It feels… lonely.  
It just adds fuel to the fire already slowly burning a hole in Tendou’s chest.  
He's probably the kind of neighbour that bakes cookies for big events, he thinks, and he eyes the cat that's currently balancing on the back of the chair to sniff at his hair.  
“What do you think, Princess,” he says softly. “Who's the real Suga?”  
The cat stares at him wearily and makes a small “mrr” sound.  
“That's what I thought,” Tendou says, and he gets up to fill her bowl again, before heading back.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi watches with amusement as his host enters the basement with two plastic bags.  
“I swung down that Korean place and got you a beef bowl,” he says as Sugawara sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. “You need a lot of iron rich food for the, uh, blood loss. It's probably less spicy than you'd like though. I didn't wanna ruin your stomach.”  
“You remember that, huh,” Sugawara smiles.  
“Uh.. yeah?” Tendou rubs the back of his neck. “Anyway, Princess is fine. She is very soft and very grumpy, but fine. I watered some of your plants also. The ones that looked droopy. Don’t know if that helped or made things worse.”  
Sugawara chuckles and snaps the offered chopsticks apart.  
“Thank you,” he says, before attacking his beef bowl. “Truly.”  
“No prob.” He sits down heavily, elbows on his knees.  
“Hey Suga.”  
“Mmmm?” Sugawara looks up, mouth full of rice.  
“Have you thought about what happens now?”  
Sugawara chews and nods at his host.  
“One of the handy things about lying around on a bed all day, is you get time to think,” he says after swallowing.  
“So what have you been thinking about?”  
“Satori, do you know anything about yakuza politics?” Sugawara asks.  
“Do I want to?”  
“Probably not,” he shrugs. “It's a lot like ancient Roman politics in that there's a lot of scheming and backstabbing and vying for power.”  
“That's literally all politics, Suga,” Tendou points out.  
“Ok, fine, but there's a lot, like, _really_ a lot of dead people in yakuza politics,” Sugawara says, shoving another load of rice into his mouth.  
“Alright. What's your point.”  
“Mmf,” Sugawara says, and he spreads his chopsticks at Tendou. “As you may or may not know, this city is basically ruled by two major syndicates. One of them is the Aoba clan, and this is the one my family is subordinate to.”  
Tendou makes a face, but says nothing.  
“So their leader died two months ago and after some rather unfortunate jostling, a new leader came out on top.”  
“Uhhh,” Tendou says. “By unfortunate you mean violent, right?”  
“Right. There was… a lot of infighting, with two high ranking officers almost destroying each other, and then in comes Oikawa. Completely out of left field, I might add. This man is young and ambitious and I have no idea how he managed to wrestle his way into the position, but he did. He’s clever like that. And now he’s there and he’s quite vulnerable until he’s fully cemented himself.”  
Tendou folds his arms. “Because backstabbing.”  
“Yes. In short, I fear this hit may have been part of a larger power play. My family has been fairly quick to support Oikawa. We have some history together. So this could be some way to either discredit my family or remove me, perhaps. If we figure out where the contract is coming from, and why, Karasuno can maybe come out of this unscathed.”  
“This Karasuno is, uh, your family, with the blood brother and all that.”  
“Yes,” Sugawara nods and Tendou thinks for a bit.  
“What if this Oikawa is the one ordering the hit?”  
“He wouldn't,” Sugawara shakes his head. “He's too busy setting up political alliances to care about random rock stars right now.”  
“Not random rock stars, Suga. Immortal vampire rock stars.”  
Sugawara gives him a look.  
“Satori... I understand that this is part of the problem, but I have no frame of reference for this. I can barely handle yakuza politics. Adding in the supernatural is a bit much.”  
“But what if they're linked?”  
Sugawara blinks and he can feel the gears click in his head towards some probably unfortunate conclusion. “I really don't want to think about that,” he says.  
Tendou slaps his knees and gets up. “Whelp, you should probably get some rest anyway,” he says. “I need to get to work. There's some of your books in the bag, if you want. Since you're staying. You already have the wifi password, yeah?”  
Sugawara smiles. “Thank you, Satori. You are a most gracious host. I apologize for the inconvenience.”

 

 

“What'll it be?” Tendou Satori says, throwing the spiky haired man his customer service smile.  
“One...” the man frowns. “One whatever the hell an Exploited Espresso is.”  
It's nearing midnight and Goshiki has, again, not shown up.  
Tendou's mood is sour with a mixture of anger and worry, and this grump of a customer isn't helping at all.  
“That's just like a regular espresso,” Tendou says, “but with more slave labour.”  
The man just blanches at him.  
Tough crowd.  
“Better make it a double,” he adds.  
“Alright, and your name?”  
“Really?” the customer says. “There's no one here.”  
“Well gee, sir, why don't I change my entire business model just for you?”  
The guy rolls his eyes. “Whatever. How much do I owe you.”  
He pays and Tendou turns the cup over to his colleague while he goes to refill milk and grab ice.  
“Uhh, one double espresso for 'Whatever'?” Kawanishi shouts behind him.

It's half an hour later that Tendou has finally had enough.  
He turns on his phone for the umpteenth time.  
“This is bullshit.”  
He pushes himself off the counter, out of the stool he's been lounging in while watching a muted slasher movie on tv.  
“I'm gonna check,” he says, and he unties his apron.  
“Check what?” says the confused voice of Kawanishi.“Is this about fanboy?” he asks, coming behind the counter with a tray of empty cups and plates.  
“This is the second day in a row.”  
“Not really like him,” Kamanishi nods, and he walks into the kitchen to put away the dishes.  
“He's not picking up his phone, people at his dorm haven't seen him, it's... ugh.”  
Kawanishi pops his head through the doorway. “You're worried.”  
“Shouldn't I be?” Tendou says, squinting. “The same damn thing happened to Reon. And he was like super good at foam art. Best damn employee I ever had. Friendly, too. I'm sick of ...” he flails his hands in the air, “foam artists disappearing on me.”  
Kawanishi rolls his eyes. “Reon probably just got caught up in some homeless shit,” he says, and then his eyes go wide when the penny drops. “Was Goshiki going there? Is he like bringing them pastries and shit? Is that what you're saying?”  
“He picked up where Reon left, yeah,” Tendou grumbles.  
“And you let him?!” Kawanishi steps up, visibly angry now.  
“Much as I would like my own set of slave minions, Kawanishi, I don’t actually get a say in what you guys do after hours,” Tendou pouts.  
“People disappear in this town all. The. Time. And you know who disappears first?”  
“I know, Kawanishi.”  
“The people that no one gives a fuck about!”  
“Well, Goshiki happens to give many fucks,” Tendou shrugs.  
“Goshiki is a naïve little idiot and you should have stopped him from doing stupid shit. You stay AWAY from homeless camps. Everyone knows that. Especially at night. That shit is dangerous.”  
Tendou sighs. “Well, I'm gonna ask them if they've seen him. You can do the counter by yourself, yeah?”  
His day manager sags.  
“You're gonna tell me you're not worried?”  
“I am,” Kawanishi says, “but I'm out of a job if you get your ass murdered.”  
“How touching, Kawanishi.”  
Tendou walks into the back room and comes back wearing a coat and a scarf.  
“Uhhhh,” Kawanishi says, “so what about, uh, the basement?”  
“Oh, don't worry about that, you just man the counter,” Tendou says, and he's off.

 

Tendou huddles into his coat and walks the route towards the university campus.  
A lot of people disappear in this town, he knows, but then, this is the kind of town where people go when they want to disappear.  
As such, the homeless population is enormous.  
People coming up from the country to lead a big city life who run out of money after three days, teenagers running away from abusive homes, that stuff. And that’s on top of the usual people that find it hard to function in regular society.   
The camp underneath the bridge lies about halfway between Tendou's coffee shop and the dorm where Goshiki lives. It is one of the larger ones in this city, a place where the less fortunate gravitate for a little warmth, a little social contact and some protection. It's a weird tent city made of tarps and cardboard, where the currency is mostly beer or blow jobs, and the main transport happens by abandoned shopping cart.  
Tendou has known about it for a long time, and somewhere in the back of his head, he's always considered it a back-up plan. It wouldn't be too hard to find someone here willing to lose a bit of blood in exchange for a shower and a warm meal.  
But he's never done it, and the thought that he could, is enough to make him hate himself.  
So what he did instead, was give Reon all his leftover pastries. Cans of soon-to-expire coffee, too. Milk, bagels, even the seasonal paper cups that were left over from New Year's. It was an easy enough way to buy off the guilt, until the fucker went missing.

Tendou tries not to think about what happened to the guy. Part of him knows that he can't have been the only person to think of the homeless camp as a feeding ground, a place for easy violence. Who knows what other monsters hide in this stupid city.  
But soon enough Goshiki goes and takes over, and now _that_ fucker is missing and Tendou _really_ doesn't want to think about what happened to him.   
Kawanishi is right. The kid is a naive little shit and he’s entirely too innocent. He doesn’t really belong here. Someone’s bound to try and take advantage.  
Tendou clears the block and takes the steps down to the harbour before turning and heading toward the underpass. The place is fairly quiet at this hour. A few dockworker bars are still open, with red lights and dancing titty girls. Two drunks sway their way across the street and Tendou rolls his eyes when they start yelling 'faggot' after him.  
He leaves the last bars behind and heads further, into the packing district, a long stretch of miserable wet concrete, glistening orange in the few street lights.  
The fog is denser here, colder too. It muffles most of the sounds, turning the whole place into a weird echo chamber of his own footsteps.  
A few cars pass him and he shrieks when one swings out of a side street in front of his feet.  
Grumbling under his breath, he ducks deeper into his coat and heads up the incline, toward the underside of the overpass.

It actually takes him a while, with the gloom and the fog, to figure out that something's wrong.  
He walks past tarps and trash and cardboard until he realizes, suddenly, that he's in the middle of the god damn encampment, and there's not a single person here.  
Frowning, he looks around. The place is a wreck, but then he was expecting that. However, on closer inspection, it's a very much destroyed wreck. Which is different.  
Tents are flattened, oil drums and fire baskets turned over, near the edge of the encampment he finds tire tracks, deep trails in the mud, like some heavy trucks have driven here.  
There’s drag marks, too. Scuffs and bits of broken rubber and torn fabric.  
Tendou sniffs and follows the trail of blood to what must be one of the entrances to the camp.  
He finds definite signs of a fight here: splotches of blood, broken makeshift furniture, a dropped knife. It smells familiar and Tendou crouches, leaning over it.  
Lemony. Something golden and viscous is laced along the blade.  
Tendou blinks and stiffens when he hears a sound. It would barely classify as a sound, really, a small shuffle on the staircase climbing up one of the bridges' pillars.

He waits. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, until he's oriented himself.  
Then he shoots off.  
He sprints toward the bridge. He crosses the camp in seconds. Adrenaline makes his hands grow, fingers inadvertently lengthening into sharp claws while he jumps onto the wall and races up the concrete cliff. A starkly white, bony hand grips the side of the staircase and he vaults over it, pinning the occupant to the metal grate in one swift motion.  
“Hello, mister Whatever,” he growls. “Care to tell me why you are following me?”  
The man, spiky hair, black raincoat and a shocked expression that's barely indistinguishable from an o-face, sucks in air but says nothing.  
“Do you have anything to do with this?” Tendou asks, and he prods a finger at the man's chest when he doesn't answer.  
Slowly, mutely, he shakes his head.   
“Then who? You know, don't you? What the fuck is going on?”  
Mister Whatever coughs and Tendou lessens his grip. “I could ask you the same question,” he says, voice hoarse and gravelly.  
This makes Tendou laugh, a high, cold cackle that sounds more like a sob than an expression of joy. “What, like you've never seen a creepy crawly before?” he grins, teeth sharp and stark in the dim light. “Tell me where they took them.”  
“I don't know,” his opponent grunts.  
Tendou frowns. “Who are you working for?”  
The man knits his eyebrows together and shuffles, taking Tendou by surprise with an unexpectedly fierce kick to his groin.  
He hisses and jumps back, landing on all fours on the stairs.  
Tendou's instinct is starting to take over. That’s going to end badly, he thinks, but he's having a lot of trouble staying calm now that anger is spiking through his veins and taking most of his human bits with it. It’s like reeling in a herd of horses with a single rope.  
The man fumbles in his coat pocket and Tendou springs up in fury, teeth growing as he sails through the air.   
Something hits him square in the chest and the man ducks, rolling to the side to avoid a swipe of Tendou's claws.  
Idiot, Tendou thinks, mind filling up with a red haze. He lands on the railing like a monkey, feet and claws gripping the iron banister as he turns, balance a bit wobbly. What’s a bullet gonna do to him?  
He moves to jump again and his movements are slower than expected. He drops onto the landing, centimetres away from the man now cowering against the wall.  
“What… is... this?”  
Tendou sways. His mind is going woozy. He feels sluggish.  
He looks down at the place he was shot.   
That’s not a bullet hole, he thinks. Bullets don’t look like that.  
“Did you just fucking shoot a tranq dart at me?”  
He steps back, stumbles into the railing. The loud crash of metal rings in his ears.  
“Aw fuck.” He puts his hands over his ears. It only makes the drumming louder.  
“Who the hell are you people,” he slurs, taking a torturous step to lean against the wall. There's a dull pain spreading through him like ink blooming in water.  
A few metres ahead of him, the man in the black coat frowns, eyes troubled.

“Ugh.” Tendou shakes his head, pushing off from the wall to stand up again, but he crashes to his knees instead, staring in wide eyed shock at his own hands.  
They've never done that before, a small voice in the back of his head is saying, while a very big voice front and center of his head can only scream.  
His limbs are extending. His arms grow longer, thinner, stretching out with a painful creak until they're barely recognizable as human, instead turning into old bones covered in dirty leather.  
His feet are getting away from him too, legs turning into dry stilts.  
Tendou moans. It feels like his muscles are being ripped from his bones, skin stretched endlessly like day old gum. He's pretty sure it's tearing and he grabs his arm, trying to push it back, trying to go back to human.  
It doesn’t work. He’s falling apart. His body is not his own, fingers click against each other with a cold, dead sound, unable to even get a grip on his own arm.  
There's footsteps ahead of him. The man, mister Whatever, turns and runs off.  
With a groan, Tendou moves to go after him but his limbs, spidery traitorous stilts that they are, buckle instead. He topples.  
His hand grasps for something to hold on to but sharp claws rake against metal, making a shrill noise that draws Tendou further off balance.  
His side hits the railing and before he can flail at it, arms slow and clumsy, he's flipping over, soaring through the air like a bag of sticks before he hits the concrete with a crack.  
He's leaking. He's fairly sure of this. Things are oozing out of him, seeping into the concrete.  
There's a dull pain that is quickly turning sharp and big and loud. His head feels like the inside of a kick drum.  
He feels his eyes close as his mind falls down a deep, deep well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Pun help**   
>  _Exploited Espresso: Espresso – The Exploited_


	8. Don't Fear the Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a fight.

 

A jangly guitar pierces the silence. It sounds muffled, but it plays a few notes before the drum kicks in, quickly followed by a cowbell.

“ _All our times have come  
Here but now they're gone”_

Someone is lazily singing, low voice sounding like it’s coming from beneath an ocean.  
Tendou frowns, not quite ready to open his eyes.  
It feels like his head is the fucking cowbell and someone’s happily hitting it with a metal pipe.

“ _Seasons don't fear the reaper  
Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain.”_

He blinks, opening his eyes with a squint. His mind is a red haze, but he can just about force his senses into coming back to him.  
He's lying on the cold ground. That much is sure. There's a lot of pain as well, now that he thinks of it.  
His vision is blurry.

“ _We can be like they are.  
Come on baby, don't fear the reaper  
Baby take my hand, don't fear the reaper”_

Wait. That's not blur, that's mist.  
In the fog above his head, he can just about make out the shadow of the overpass above him.  
He rolls his head to the side. Fucking hell that's a lot of red stuff.  
Is that his?  
His mouth tastes dry and coppery. His stomach contracts with the unmistakable ache of hunger.  
Not the regular kind, either, but Hunger, with a capital H.

“ _We'll be able to fly, don't fear the reaper  
Baby I'm your man”_

With a groan, he lifts his head, suddenly aware of where the singing is coming from.  
He fishes around in his coat and answers his phone.  
“Yeah?” His voice sounds like gravel.  
“Satori? You're alive? Are you ok?”  
“Uh.” He lets his head sink back down. “I'm lying spread-eagled on the concrete of an abandoned homeless camp,” he says. “Does that count?”  
Kawanishi, on the other side of the line, curses. “Does that mean you didn't find Goshiki?”  
“Yeah, he's missing. They all are.”  
“Fucking hell,” Kawanishi says. And then:“You sound like shit.”  
“I do in fact feel like shit,” Tendou confesses. “I may have gotten into a fight.”  
Kawanishi sighs. “How bad is it? Are you going to make it home?”  
“Uhhhh.”  
Tendou lifts an arm. It's surprisingly difficult. He feels weak, like he has the world's worst hangover.  
His coat is ripped, he notices, pretty much coated in blood, too.  
Fucking hell, he's hungry.  
“Fuck it, I'm coming to pick you up. Stay there,” Kawanishi says, and Tendou does not argue.

 

“Holy shit. Jesus fucking christ,” Kawanishi curses when he walks up twenty minutes later.  
“Is that fucking blood? How are you alive?”  
Tendou sits up woozily. “Yeah well, you shoulda seen the other guy.”  
Kawanishi rolls his eyes and pulls him up, dragging Tendou's arm over his shoulder as they shuffle to his car. Tendou’s mouth fills with saliva at the smell of his grumpy friend.  
“I'm taking you to the hospital,” Kawanishi says.  
“Don't.”  
“Are you serious? Look at you! You're just about dead.”  
Tendou sighs.  
“I don’t like doctors,” he says. “At least not doctors that aren’t my brilliant and wonderful friend Kawanishi. Just drop me off at my place. Please? I'll be right as rain tomorrow.”  
The last thing he needs now is a hospital room full of delicious people.  
He’s having enough trouble not sinking his teeth in Kawanishi right this second, and he’s fairly certain Kawanishi would taste yucky. Like pure undiluted salt.   
But the thought of his friend flailing helplessly, bleeding dry into his mouth, is making Tendou excited.  
Excited and very, very disgusted at himself.  
“By what medical or biological rule are you going to be ok tomorrow?” Kawanishi is arguing, “This isn’t a hangover, Satori. You can’t just sleep this off, you idiot. This much haemorrhaging is bound to make you anaemic, possibly drop you into hypovolemic shock. ”  
“Don't you throw your fancy medical words at me,” Tendou pouts as they reach Kawanishi's car.  
He hangs onto the roof while his friend opens the door, putting down a blanket in the back seat before shoving Tendou inside.  
“Please,” Tendou says again, pouting and fluttering his eyes like a begging puppy.   
Kawanishi huffs and gets behind the wheel. He doesn't speak again for the entire drive.  
Tendou sits in the back seat and lets his head rest against the window.  
He tries hard not to think about Kawanishi and the incredible sack of meat and blood he is. That man is not going to taste good, he tells himself over and over. He’s going to taste of guilt and self-hate.  
No matter what his body is telling him.  
Tendou bites his tongue and concentrates hard on the world outside the window. The titty girls, bosoms supple and easy to sink teeth into. The dockworkers. Big, muscular. Assholes. How they’d scream if he were to tear into them.  
He can feel his teeth grow and he keeps his mouth firmly shut, tongue getting more wrecked by the minute.

 

Kawanishi stops in front of Tendou’s apartment and silently pulls him from the back seat.  
He supports him on his shoulder and drags him up the stairs.  
He’s so close, Tendou thinks. If he looks to the side, he can see an angry vein pulse in Kawanishi’s neck. It would be so easy.  
He’s so hungry.  
He desperately bites his tongue.  
Kawanishi looks up.  
“Holy shit,” he says. “Why the hell is your mouth dripping blood? What the fuck? What is _wrong_ with you?”  
Tendou wipes his chin and says nothing.   
They make it up to the apartment and Kawanishi leans his boss against a wall. He fishes the keys out of Tendou’s pocket before pulling him inside and shoving him onto a kitchen chair.  
“Are you sure about this?” Kawanishi says, arms folded.  
Tendou nods vehemently. His mouth is full of blood and his tongue is shredded, but he made it.   
He tips his head back and swallows.  
“Absolutely,” he says, throwing Kawanishi a bright red smile. “I'm fantastic.”  
His day manager gives him a disgusted look. “I'll call you in the morning. If you don't pick up, I'm sending an ambulance.”  
“Aww, you _do_ care”, Tendou says.  
“I told you, I'm out of a job if you die, so I would prefer it if you didn’t,” Kawanishi grumbles, before slamming the door on his way out.  
When he's gone, Tendou leans back in his chair and stretches out an arm to open the fridge door.  
In the bottom of the vegetable drawer, behind a wilted lettuce, sits a plastic box labelled 'cranberry juice'.  
It does not contain cranberry juice.  
Head spinning, he scrabbles for the box and pulls out a plastic bag, bringing it straight to his mouth as he sinks his teeth in.  
The blood tastes cold and coppery. It’s coagulated into a thick, slimy soup.  
Tendou drinks it down like it's ambrosia. The liquid streams down his throat and coats his insides.  
It switches something off in his brain, makes him feel like some animal.  
No control, no self-discipline. He hasn't felt this lost, this hungry, this _needy_ , in ages.

When he regains his senses, he finds himself licking the inside of the bag. It tastes like cold plastic.  
The pain in his head is fading, broken skin and muscle reattaching itself.  
He sighs and gets up, heading to the bathroom.  
His clothes fall into a pile that stains the floor and he steps into the shower, leans his head against the tile wall, and stands there, motionless, until the water running into the drain is no longer a dirty red.  
The shower water is quickly cooling, but that’s fine.  
He sinks to the floor, letting it trickle onto his head, and he watches his hands.  
That’s never happened before, whatever the hell that was earlier.   
He wonders if it means something.   
Like maybe he’s going feral. Like he was never meant to be halfway, something that looks and acts human. Like maybe he’s supposed to just live like the monster underneath, hide in some clock tower and shun the light of day, that kinda thing.   
His hands are, to all intents and purposes, normal again. They look like his hands, at least, scar from that one time someone put out a cigarette in his palm and everything.  
But when he looks at them, he still sees the claws.  
He hugs his knees and sits in the cold shower, and he looks at his hands.

 

When Tendou comes into work the next day, Kawanishi walks right up to him and squints, before he inquisitively starts prodding various parts of his body.  
“Hey! Ow!”  
“What the fuck,” is all Kawanishi says.  
“I told you I'd be fine. I appreciate the genuine concern you give me, dear employee, but-”  
“What the fuck kind of prank was that, you asshole?” Kawanishi interrupts, and he sounds genuinely angry. “If you just got stoned and needed a ride I'd have called you a fucking cab. There's no need for you to pretend you're fucking dying.”  
“He was dying?” Eri says, head popping out of the kitchen.  
“I, uh, got in a fight? I was not dying.”  
“You wouldn't believe the amount of blood covering his stupid ass,” Kawanishi goes on, “Like someone cut open a pig and bled it all over him.”  
“Ewwwwww,” Eri whines, and she retreats.  
“Alright, alright, jeez, do you have to scare the customers?” Tendou says, holding up his hand. The goth kids in the corner are looking at them with obvious interest. “Like I said, it looked worse than it actually was.”  
Kawanishi grumbles. “Fine, but you looked like barely warmed over shit yesterday, so whatever drug you're taking to be standing here like nothing happened, you should start sharing.”  
“Ahh, family secret, I'm afraid,” Tendou says, “it's all about good genes, bed rest and the LOVINGLY MADE AWESOME COFFEE OF MONSTER COFFEE,” he adds in a louder voice when the goth kids are still obviously listening in.  
Kawanishi rolls his eyes, but he drops the topic, returning to the counter to serve a girl walking up.  
Tendou slips into the back and steals a few slices of whatever Eri's baking. Then he makes his way down the stairs.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi sits up at the scent of fresh baked goods with heavy undertones of cinnamon.  
“That smells nice,” he tells Tendou when he enters the room with a tray in his hands.  
“Got you some autumn flavoured cake thing,” the redhead says.  
Sugawara happily accepts the plate. “Surely that's not what they're called?”  
Tendou smirks. “It's a new flavour Eri's working on, and we don't have a name yet. It's either Judas Pumpkin or This Mortal Carrot cake. It has both ingredients, and the staff is... undecided.”  
Sugawara sniggers and bites down. “'s Good tho,” he says through the crumbs in his mouth.  
Tendou nods and takes a seat. “How you feeling?”  
“Mm, better, thank you.”  
“You already got new bandages?”  
“Yes, mister Kawanishi came in and replaced them. He's good at this.”  
“Well he's studying to be a doctor,” Tendou says, folding his arms.  
“Ahh. Yeah that explains a lot.” Sugawara finishes the cake and sniffs at the mug of black Colombian coffee Tendou brought him. God that smells divine.  
“Could probably work on his bedside manner,” Tendou mumbles.  
Sugawara chuckles. “He may have been a bit grumpy.”

He looks up, noting the lines in Tendou's face. He's not entirely sure if vampires need sleep, but Tendou very much looks like he hasn't had enough of it. He gives the impression of a puppy that's been kicked one too many times and Sugawara feels a pang of guilt.  
“Are you ok?” he asks gently, between sips of coffee.  
Tendou gives him a deadpan stare.  
“I mean, apart from...” Sugawara waves vaguely at the room. “If I'm causing you stress, I can leave, you know.”  
Tendou sighs. “Yeah, sending a wounded man out into the street sounds like a great idea,” he says. “This has nothing to do with you, or maybe it does and I don't know but, ugh.”  
“Would you like to talk about it?”  
“Everything is fucked,” Tendou huffs, and he ruffles his fingers through his hair. “I have no idea what's going on. Goshiki's missing and whoever took him is...ridiculous, so I dunno.”  
Suga frowns and Tendou sighs at him.  
“Listen. You know how Semi is really strong and really hard to kill?” he says.  
“I... am aware.”  
“Well after he ran away from you, or... from us, I guess, he got in another fight. I tracked him to an abandoned building and he fought something ridiculously tough. He got hurt. Badly.”  
“Uh, wasn't he... already hurt?” Sugawara says carefully. He's certain he at least slowed the guy down. He was swaying. There was a bullet hole in his head.  
“I hate to break it to you, bud, but no. You probably put a dent in him, but when he...” Tendou stops himself. “If he finds blood, he's back to being his regular asshole self real fast.”  
“And... you think he found blood.”  
“Yeah,” Tendou sighs. “So whatever it is that fought him, fought him at near-full strength and that must have been pretty fucking epic, judging by the destruction they left behind.”  
Suga tilts his head thoughtfully. “So it was like another, uh, vampire?”  
“No... I mean, yes, that would make sense, but vampires don't smell like that,” Tendou shakes his head.  
“Like what?”  
“Like household cleaner,” he says. “Like lemon, like... like crushed ants. The whole point of a vampire is the blood, see? Whatever this is, it’s throwing icky yellow shiny stuff around.”  
“Like acid?”  
Tendou knits his eyebrows together. “I guess?”

Sugawara nods and puts his mug down. “Ok so where are you going with this.”  
“I saw it again, yesterday. The gold lemon stuff. I went to look for Goshiki and it was at the place where he probably disappeared. So I have to ask, are any of your overlords like... lizard people or something.”  
Sugawara blinks and holds back a smile. “They're not.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“No? I don’t think that’s something they’d tell me.”  
Tendou leans back, flopping over the chair like a wet dish rag. “What fucking can of worms has Semisemi opened this time,” he mutters.

 

 

Tendou Satori laments about the more than fucked up situation they've found themselves in while Suga, beautiful, thoughtful, very-calm-in-fucked-up-situations Suga is quiet.  
Tendou sits up and runs a hand through his hair. “So we're boned, is what I'm saying. Probably. Not in a good way either.”  
“Satori,” Suga says gently, “It'll be ok.”  
“What makes you so sure?”  
“I won’t tell you I’ve seen worse situations than this, but I do know that I’ve managed to escape some very… unfortunate scenarios so far. We will get out of this one as well,” Suga says. “My companions are investigating this and they’re very… thorough. If there is a link to this rock star friend of yours, they’ll find it and they’ll fix things. I have a lot of faith in them. If this really is yakuza business you should probably let them handle it.”  
“Ok, but your buddies only care about yakuza things, Suga. They don't care about _Goshiki_ ,” Tendou says, punctuating each syllable. “My _employee_ is _missing._ This is the _second_ fucking _time_ one of my crew disappears. I know you don’t give a _shit_ about human life but these are _my people_.”  
Suga winces at the words, but Tendou is past caring at this point. He’s done. With yakuza, with Semi, with fucking shitty people messing up his nice sorta-stable life. As if it wasn’t hard enough to keep that up without random hit men in his basement.  
“I understand that you’re upset,” Suga says in a voice he probably thinks is soothing, “but some of the people I know would pose a risk to anyone you still have left.”  
Tendou growls at the way he says it. The way he just assumes that Goshiki is already lost. Given up.  
“Please,” Suga continues. “If this really is yakuza business, it’s best if you have nothing to do with it.”  
“Bit late for that, isn't it?” Tendou grumbles.

Suga closes his eyes with a pained expression. “I'm sorry, Satori,” he says. “For everything. For seducing you-”  
Tendou raises an eyebrow and Suga smiles briefly.  
“For letting you seduce me,” he corrects. “For getting close. For burdening you with all... this. I wasn't-”  
“You were planning to fuck and run,” Tendou huffs. “I already knew that. You don't have to get all lovey dovey with me now.”  
Suga opens and closes his mouth a few times, gaping like a fish.  
“I... yes. I was,” he finally says. “And you deserve better than that. I didn't want to drag you into this, even before I knew how badly it would blow up in my face. I... rather like you.”  
“Apart from the whole ‘beast from your nightmare’ thing, I guess,” Tendou grunts.  
Suga chuckles and shakes his head. “I don’t particularly mind, though I wonder when you were planning to tell me you were… immortal. And the blood thing.”  
“Not exactly third date stuff, Suga.”  
“True, true. I can relate, I suppose. But still. I shouldn't have done any of this, and I certainly shouldn’t have allowed you to get... dragged in. I guess I felt... good, for a while. Like I didn't want it to be over that... soon.”  
Tendou watches the beautiful, wounded, murderous Suga lie in a cot in a coffee shop basement searching for the words to confess to him, and what he feels most pressingly is anger. At Semi for being an idiot. At himself for actually getting his hopes up there for a while. At Suga for being both perfect and just… the worst. At life, also, for fucking him over repeatedly.

He sighs.  
Now he just went and made himself sad.  
Suga looks at him as if he gets it.   
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I do mean it. I didn’t want to hurt you. I'm a pretty horrible human being, Tendou Satori, as you may have found out by now, but that doesn't mean I don't care. I laughed earlier because you consider three deaths enough to make you a monster. I....”  
“You're not too big on human lives, I know.”  
Suga winces again. Tendou's probably being too blunt, he already feels bad about it.  
“That's not... I try not to think too much about it,” Suga says after a while. “I realize you think I'm some... heartless person but it's not like I relish in this. I don't have a choice.”  
“You always have a choice, Suga,” Tendou says softly.  
“I'm _trying_ to-”  
A guitar melody interrupts him, quickly followed by a rhythm played on cowbell.  
“Excuse me,” Tendou says, and he pulls out his phone. “Hopefully that's fucking Goshiki ready to get yelled at.”  
Suga bites his lip and folds his arms.

“Satori, it's Yamagata,” the voice on the other end whispers.  
Tendou pouts. “What do you want?” he says. “Why are you whispering?”  
“Look it's.... can you come over? I know you hate the shit out of us but-”  
There's a loud crash on the line, like wood splintering.  
“It's Semi,” Yamagata whispers, “He's-” Another crash, and something like a scream or a very loud moan drowns out whatever Yamagata is saying.  
“...trouble. You're the only one I know who may be able to calm him down,” he finishes.  
“What the fuck, Yamagata?” Tendou says, while Suga frowns at him from his bed, “Whatever happened to 'leave him alone'? What's going on?”  
“Look, it's... it's bad, I can't-”  
More moans, and a heavy 'thud' sound.  
“Please?” Yamagata pleads.  
Tendou sighs. Semi has always had a terrible temper. He usually deals with it by destroying hotel rooms, which is very rock star of him. But this seems like a step above the normal shit and Yamagata actually sounds frightened.  
“Where?” he grunts.  
“There's an abandoned church in that empty district. I don't know the address,” Yamagata says, raising his voice so it's audible over the sound of someone throwing furniture around. “Do you remember? We staked it out for a photo shoot a few years ago. Fake Romanesque architecture, lots of vines.”  
“Yeah, I remember,” Tendou says, rubbing his hand across his forehead. “I'll be right there.”

He closes the call and sits quietly for a second, thinking.  
“Everything alright?” Suga asks.  
Suga, beautiful, soft, possibly-horrible-human-being Suga, sits in the bed with bandages on his chest after having almost been killed and he has the balls to give Tendou a worried look.  
“I need to step out for a bit,” Tendou says, getting up with a groan. “Get some rest?”  
“Satori?”  
The face Suga's making screams of sympathetic concern. Big hazel eyes, with the long lashes blinking fast. Eyebrows knit just a little, forming two small vertical lines in his forehead.   
It speaks of warmth and care and that is something Tendou can’t handle right now. If he falls for this again, he won't get back up. Like ever.  
He turns on his heel and wordlessly leaves the room, heading back up the stairs.   
“Hey, I have an errand to run,” he tells Kawanishi. “I'll be back for the night shift, ok?”  
“You better,” Kawanishi mumbles.  
With a wave, he heads out into the cold evening.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi bites his lip.   
That went... bad. He never thought he'd get lectured on the cost of human life by an actual vampire.   
This is what he gets for opening up and trying to fix the situation.   
He made it worse. He made it so much worse.  
This is exactly why Daichi calls the shots, he thinks.   
He got too involved and he tried to make his host (his lover, a small voice in the back of his head whispers) feel better, but a hurt Tendou is like a brick wall, it seems. There’s no getting through. And now he’s gone and made it worse.  
Sugawara sighs. He should never have gotten that close. He certainly shouldn't have gotten his hopes up and he absolutely should never have confessed.   
This place is obviously getting to him.  
If he stays here much longer....  
A decision slowly forms and he groans.   
This was bound to happen, wasn't it?  
He fishes around for his phone.  
“Nothing a week of heart ache and ice cream can't fix,” he tells himself.   
Maybe two weeks of heart ache. And a batch of brownies.  
He finds his phone and dials the first number on his contact list.   
He should have done this days ago. His stupid heart and his stupid… wants have been getting in the way of the mission.  
He’s supposed to be the reliable one for fuck’s sake. 

There is a long beep, and then a familiar voice.  
“Yeah?”  
“Daichi?”  
“Hey,” the voice on the other side of the line says gently. “You ok?”  
“I’m going to have to go,” Sugawara says.   
“Did they turn hostile?”  
“No, nothing like that,” Sugawara answers, feeling his chest sink a little. “It’s more that I outstayed my welcome. It’s best for everyone involved if I go. Are you guys far?”  
“I’ll send Asahi and Noya,” Daichi says.  
“Tell them to meet me in the street. I’m ok with walking a little. Come pick me up in front of the electronics store. You know the one? With the big parking lot and the Turkish hair dresser.”  
“That’s quite a walk Suga.”  
“It’s like half a block. I’ll be fine. I don’t want to disturb this place any more than I’ve already done. We don’t want to alert anyone.”  
“Noted,” Daichi says. “We’ll be there as fast as we can, but it’ll be at least half an hour.”  
“That’s fine. Sorry for the trouble.”  
“No trouble, Suga, I just need you safe, is all.”  
And Daichi closes the call as Sugawara slowly moves his legs over the side of the bed.   
He checks under his pillow and pulls out the parcel, weighing it in his hand.  
Then he leans over, painfully, to the first aid kit.   
One more compress isn’t going to matter, he thinks, and he pulls out some medical tape.

 

 

 

Sugawara Koushi carefully puts on the sneakers Tendou brought him. Then he silently gets up and grabs his hoodie from a nearby chair.  
The sweatpants he's wearing managed to elicit a snarky comment from both Tendou _and_ the Kawanishi boy, but he's not about to argue style.  
He glances at the clock on his phone: 20:34 am. The place should be nearly empty.  
He slips through the basement door and tiptoes up the stairs. To his left is the bathroom, he knows, and down the corridor is the kitchen, with a big open doorway heading into the shop proper.   
To his right is what looks like a small cloak room for staff, and further down the hall would be the back door.  
He takes a right, keeping low, and sneaks out of the back door like a thief in the night.   
Sugawara takes a moment to breathe and straightens up, grimacing at the pain in his side.   
The alleyway behind the coffee shop smells pretty bad. A mixture of sour milk, coffee and urine.   
He takes a deep breath and walks through the corridor, towards the main street. 

There’s some commotion here and he halts, hides behind a corner to look out.   
A large black armoured looking car and two black vans have stopped in front of the building. Men in suits climb out.  
Half of them file into the coffee shop while the rest secure the street.  
The sound of screams comes from inside and he hears the tell-tale pops of gunfire.   
They’re here for him, Sugawara knows. They'll tear the whole place down looking for him.  
Good thing he's not inside, huh.  
The men haven’t gotten far in securing the area, so he could walk back down the alleyway and out the other side, maybe disappear in some convenience store until the coast is clear.   
He turns and shuffles back, passing the open door to the shop.  
There's the sound of a shot, broken porcelain and a girl shrieking.  
Eri.  
Sugawara whines and leans against the wall, listening.  
“Where is he?” someone barks inside. “I know you little shits are hiding him.”  
“Look man, I don't know what-” there's a thud, and Kawanishi whimpers.  
Sugawara frowns. Ok, that will end badly.   
Based on what he's heard and seen from the barista, Kawanishi is stubborn as a mule, and those yakuza are going to destroy him.  
He closes his eyes, gives himself two seconds to come to a decision.  
This was always going to end badly, wasn't it?

Sugawara swallows and crouches, sneaking back inside. He silently heads into the kitchen where he grabs a large bread knife.   
There’s a mirror on the wall here, probably hung so that the person working at the sink can keep an eye on the shop. If he’s careful, Sugawara can use it to see some of the attackers, near the entryway.   
He angles himself with caution, trying to get a good view without being noticed.   
The mirror reveals several obvious mobsters. Men in black suits with grim expressions, armed with... holy shit are those AK-47’s?  
They went all out. They’re definitely here for him.   
They're not going to hold back, either, unless he can make them.  
He sighs deeply and slowly stands up, facing the intruders in the mirror.  
“Hello,” he says, “were you looking for me?”  
The potential leader of the group lets out a sharp laugh. “Decided to show up, did ya? Come on out.”  
Sugawara swallow heavily, but manages to keep his expression calm and serious.  
Sometimes reputation is all you have, he thinks. Sugawara has worked hard for that reputation, and right now he hopes to god that he's worked hard enough.  
The fact that they sent eight men with rifles to pick up one wounded hit man gives him some hope to that, at least.  
“I have a minor request first,” he says. He smiles mildly and keeps his voice steady and polite, just loud enough to be heard in the other room.  
“What makes you think you have any requests to make?” the guy in the shop yells.  
“Come now, we’re both professionals here.”  
“Do you honestly think you can negotiate with me? Come out now or I take this whole building down.”  
Sugawara smiles, eyes cold.  
“You know who I am, yes?” he says, listening for movement in the other room. “You know who you've been asked to get?”  
“What's your point,” the guy says.  
“Then you know, that if I go down with a fight, there will be casualties. And I'm not just talking about those customers.”  
A moment of silence.   
“Let’s hear your stupid request then.”  
“That’s very congenial of you,” Sugawara hums. “ Here’s what I propose. I will come out, hands up, unarmed, if you let those people go unharmed. It's me you want, isn't it?”  
“You're one man, what are you gonna do to stop us.”  
“I am the Silver Crow,” Sugawara says, simply.  
“Most of that is bullshit talk and you know it.”  
Sugawara sighs, like a teacher disappointed that his student didn’t get an obvious question right, “Are you sure you want to risk that?” he says.  
There's whispering now. He has them, he thinks.  
“If even half those stories are true, one third of them, are you really ready to face me?” Sugawara continues and he fixes the mobster with his coldest gaze in the mirror. “Let them leave. Now.”  
There's a shuffle and in the kitchen mirror, Sugawara can see several freaked out customers, including the four goth kids, Eri and a bruised looking Kawanishi, file out before running off down the street.  
“There,” the man in the other room shouts. “Now play nice. Put the gun on the floor where we can see it.”  
Sugawara hears footsteps by the back door. He's surrounded now.  
Well, that was to be expected, he supposes.  
He puts the knife down and gives it a kick, so it's in front of the open doorway.  
“Ha!” the guy shouts, “You have some balls you little shit. Now come through the door, hands up.”  
He does so, taking a step into the doorway and blinking into the sight lights of four different guns aimed at him.  
To his right, the back door is kicked open and there's the sound of more guns being readied.  
“Mind telling me what this is about?” he asks pleasantly.  
“Mister Shirabu wants to see you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tendou’s ringtone is _Blue Öyster Cult – Don’t fear the reaper_
> 
> **Pun help**   
>  _Judas Pumpkin cake: Pumpkin cake – Judas Priest_   
>  _This Mortal Carrot cake: Carrot cake – This Mortal Coil_


	9. A Bad Part of Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things go Badly.

Tendou Satori sits in the subway car and sways along with the rattling vehicle.  
Good job, he thinks. Great idea, chewing out a wounded man for doing what he considers is his duty. Total moral ground there, mister vampire bro.   
It's not like Tendou's soul is clean, if he still has one.   
“I try not to think too much about it,” Suga said and while Tendou can’t really _relate_ he can sort of understand. For instance, somewhere deep down, Tendou always knew what Semi was.   
Maybe he didn't know fully what he _was,_ but at least he had a vague idea of what he _did._  
And he promptly ignored it.   
Like everyone ignored it. People randomly disappearing or getting sent to the hospital. The violence, the broken furniture. Smoothed over and forgotten.  
He was so blinded by Semi’s glow, so eager to worship him, that he tried not to think about it.   
At least not until it bit him in the… well in the neck, actually.  
And now he's here, ready to clean up Semi’s shit yet again.  
He rubs the back of his head and rolls his neck.

Tendou is the only one getting off the subway at his stop, and he's the only one in the street when he emerges from the underground.  
This is a run-down part of town, slated for development years ago, with the land bought by the city and then just kinda left there.   
During the daytime, some of the storehouses here are used by factories as spill-over from the sprawling harbour, its tentacles stretching far into the city.   
But at night it's mostly dead. Weeds grow between the cracks in the pavement, street lights don't work. You'd expect squatters in a place like this, but apparently not even they want to be here. Rumours abound about bad things happening at night.  
The basic idea is: you spend the night here, you die.  
So that should be lovely, Tendou thinks as he ambles around a shuttered school. If he remembers correctly, the church should be right ahead.  
They wanted to do a photo shoot here a few years ago. It's an old building, crumbling even before the area around it was sentenced to death. A squat, dilapidated affair, with big flagstones making up the façade, broken stained glass windows, vines crawling on tombstones and a whole bunch of trash, from discarded shopping trolleys to pee stained mattresses. The whole thing is very much Semi's aesthetic, Tendou remembers. He always was the romantic sort.  
The rusty gate creaks ominously as he steps into the churchyard.  
Nice, Tendou thinks. Very fitting. Good mood setter.

He picks his way through the overgrown cemetery until he reaches the entranceway, where a heavy, carved wooden door hangs loose from its hinges. Behind it, he can see a few dim lights burning.  
Man, this place really is going for it, Tendou notes, and he silently steps into the atrium.  
The inside of the church is dead quiet. Candles burn in alcoves in the wall and ahead of him, the church's benches are all pretty much reduced to splinters. Even the altar at the front seems to be crushed into rubble, and that thing looks like it's made of stone.  
“Uh, hello?” Tendou says, and his voice echoes between what's left of the aisles.  
There's a shuffle somewhere in the ambulatory, behind the altar, and he carefully walks there, risking a sniff. The place smells like mould and wood and dust, and somewhere in there is also a whole bunch of _wrong_.  
And then there's Yamagata. A mixture of cedar scented deodorant and dogged loyalty.  
He finds the guy behind a bunch of broken furniture, looking like a discarded sack of drum sticks.  
“Jesus fuck, what happened to you?” he says, crawling over a toppled statue.  
“Satori.” Yamagata sounds weak, voice fluttering like a magazine being blown open by the wind.   
On closer inspection, it becomes clear what, exactly, happened to him.  
The drummer is pale, sucked very nearly dry.  
“Fuck! I'm calling you an ambulance.”  
“They don't come out here,” Yamagata hums, rolling his head to face Tendou.  
“The cops then. Jesus.”  
“Listen,” Yamagata says, limply grabbing his wrist. “I need you to find Semi, he's going to do something stupid.”  
“More stupid than fucking kill you?” Tendou growls, but Yamagata just chuckles.  
“I gave it to him... willingly,” he whispers.  
“Yeah well, you're an idiot. You gonna just lie here and die quietly like some 18th century heroine? What is _wrong_ with you?”  
Yamagata just grins. “Devotion's a bitch, isn't it?”  
“Try devoting yourself to someone who isn't an asshole, you dipshit.”  
“Listen, Satori,” Yamagata tries again. “He's not himself.”  
“Bullshit.”  
“Since that fight, since the department store. He's been changing. Physically. Bits of him are growing, it's... he's like some weird mutant now.”  
Tendou makes a face. “Well shit.”  
“It's the poison. That gold stuff? He leaks it. He says it's calling to him.”  
“What the actual fuck, Yamagata.”  
“Semi got some in a wound and it... it turned him into some kind of monster. He finally snapped today, he ran off. You have to find him and stop him.”  
Tendou lifts his head and sniffs. Yeah, that's the wrong smell alright. Vampire master and toilet cleaner, what a fucking great combination.  
“He's gonna get himself killed,” Yamagata presses.  
“Unlike you, who's gonna be just fine,” Tendou huffs.  
“Look, don't worry about me.”  
“Someone fucking has to. Give me your phone.”  
Yamagata doesn't react, so Tendou pats him down.

“Here's what we're going to do,” Tendou says, pulling out the drummer's smartphone. “I'm calling you an ambulance and dragging you to the pavement so the fuckers will find you. I'm also calling your fucking manager to get his ass in a car and get over here.”  
Yamagata rolls his eyes.  
“And _then_ I'm gonna track down Semi motherfucking Eita and kick him halfway into next week, mutant form or no.”  
“If you wait too long, you'll have lost him,” Yamagata whines, but Tendou waves him away.  
“I can smell the bastard anywhere.”  
Yamagata gives him a weak, sad smile and allows Tendou to haul him out of the church, yelling at the band’s manager on his phone all the way to the pavement. There, Tendou wraps his friend up in his coat and scarf and leaves him leaning against the churchyard wall.  
“Here's your phone.”  
Yamagata nods sleepily.  
“An ambulance is on the way, and if it doesn't get here, Washio will. Now sit tight and try not to die, ok?”  
“Go, Satori,” Yamagata whispers. “Find him.”  
Shaking his head, Tendou heads back into church. He sniffs, tracing the smell of Semi to a broken window at the back.  
Mutated monster escape sequence, he grumbles to himself, how very Frankenstein. He jumps the two meters up to the hole in the wall and climbs through.  
He can almost feel the scent of Semi in the air. Even as chemical as it is, as wrong as it is, it has a pull on him. It calls to him.  
Tendou sighs and follows like a grumpy mule on a chain.

 

 

After a bumpy and deeply uncomfortable ride, the van transporting Sugawara Koushi stops and the back doors open.  
He blinks at the flash-light aimed at him, as he is pulled roughly to his feet.  
“This way,” the leader of the men says, “and don't even think about fucking trying anything.”  
Sugawara follows, stumbling a little. The bandages are making these men weary and he allows himself to lean on one of them, having the guy drag him along.  
It's fairly obvious they've been told to get him alive, he thinks, while he walks across a mostly empty parking lot. There's only about a dozen cars here, most of them 'goon vans', the typical black cars that armed men always seem to be hauled around in.  
He risks a glance at the environment, trying to recognize what this place is supposed to be. It's certainly not a standard Aoba building. None he's ever been to, at least.  
Furthermore, the neighbourhood he's in is uncannily dark, like they are in the middle of the countryside. But they can't possibly be, they haven't driven that far.  
His eyes adjust to the gloom as they near a large building, and he can see tall, boxy shadows line the stretch of concrete. They're definitely in the middle of the city. There's just no one here.  
No street lights. No casual passers-by.  
Unfortunate.  
Ahead of him, someone opens a giant vertical lift door on what looks like a run-down factory.  
Sugawara briefly wonders how they're getting power when everything else is dead, before he's shoved inside, walking through a long hallway flanked by three armed guards.

If the factory looks run-down on the outside, on the inside it… very much isn’t.  
The place is dimly lit, but it’s clean. Sterile, almost.   
The beige walls and white tile floors are scoured and slick, it smells heavily of household cleaner.   
Citrusy.  
Sugawara half expects to be given a hair net, a mouth mask and one of those white pyjamas people use in food processing plants. He and his captors look so out of place it’s ridiculous.  
He follows the tall man in the black suit through a long hallway, making sure to stumble now and then. They pass a number of offices and a cafeteria, before heading through double doors. The hallway goes on, but to his right is a loading bay.  
Through large glass windows, he can see that it's a fairly big room and it has a skip in it. When Sugawara squints, he can make out what looks like pieces of fabric. Maybe something that could be a boot.   
He tilts his head, but the end of an AK-47 is pushed into his shoulder blade and he hurries along.  
They walk on through another set of double doors. The room next to it is smaller now, with a number of devices hanging from the ceiling, long cords stretching down like spider’s legs. Sugawara can't help but look. On the end of the cords are small handle-like things that remind him of an electric razor.  
Is this some kind of sheep shearing facility?  
An abattoir maybe?  
The meat processing idea gets traction in his mind as the hallway passes through doors again and Sugawara sees what looks like a holding room next to him.   
It starts wide but then a guidance railing gradually pushes whatever occupants are in the room towards a single file corridor and onto a conveyor belt.  
The guy behind him chuckles when Sugawara leans to the side to check.  
“You sure are a nosy one, ain't ya?”  
He grins and reaches out a hand, flipping a switch.

On the factory floor ahead, the machinery starts up and the man pushes Sugawara to walk.   
Next to them, the conveyor belt runs through some rubber flaps and while it moves on in a straight line, large, heavy duty meat hooks swoop down from above it and pull up again.   
The hooks then head through a tunnel that reminds Sugawara of a car wash. Sprays of water, foam, hot air. Further up ahead, he can see the railings veer off into a large factory hall.   
The place looks a little like the world’s most grisly roller-coaster, with a conveyor system taking the meat hooks off in different directions, up, down, through turns and past a series of increasingly nebulous looking machinery.  
This isn't like any meat processing plant Sugawara has ever seen, and something in his stomach is starting to protest heavily.  
The man ahead of him turns left. Sugawara can only follow.  
He is shoved up a staircase and through another set of double doors until the group reaches a large platform. It’s a balcony of sorts, overlooking the factory proper.  
From here, he can see the production lines rolling through the plant. One of them, carrying empty, sterilized meat hooks, runs right by the platform he’s on. It takes a turn a little further and then merges with another conveyor carrying little cubicles that reminds Sugawara of phone boxes.   
A box opens, the hook enters, and the box closes with a snap, moving on to make room for the next set.  
Sugawara's mind blanches and his stomach turns, but he does not get the chance to let his imagination take over. A side door opens and the men around him stand to attention.

Shirabu makes a lazy gesture and two of Sugawara's captors retreat to a corner, where they stand guard while the Aoba lieutenant eyes him coldly, raising an eyebrow at the messy hair and the sweatpants.  
“Mister Shirabu?” Sugawara says, unperturbed. “You wanted to speak to me?”  
“You are quite the troublesome one, aren't you?” Shirabu says. He walks over to the railing and lights a cigarette.  
“I'm sorry?”  
“Don't be,” Shirabu says. “It's a compliment. I wasn't expecting you to hold out so long. In a way, I suppose you exceeded my expectations.”  
Sugawara blinks. “What is this about... sir?”  
Shirabu leans over the railing, seemingly ignoring him.  
He takes a deep drag from his cigarette, blowing little smoke rings.  
Three armed men, Sugawara thinks. He can fairly easily take at least two of them. No telling if Shirabu is packing heat. Probably is.  
Four armed men then.  
There's a few more downstairs. He counted about ten.  
That's assuming there aren't more located further in the factory.

“What drives you, Sugawara Koushi?” Shirabu asks without turning to him.  
Sugawara doesn’t even hesitate. “My brothers.”  
“Sentimental sort, are you?”  
“I suppose.”  
Shirabu nods. “Understandable. We all have something we admire. An ideal we strive towards. For you it’s family. Personally, I feel like my goals are more... ambitious.”  
Sugawara says nothing as Shirabu turns slowly, cocking his head at him.  
“Have you ever seen something of such beauty, such force that you were nailed to the floor, awestruck?”  
“I can’t say that I have, sir.”  
This makes Shirabu nod. “The ideal form,” he explains. “Pure power. Something almost godlike. That is my goal.”  
“I’m not sure I follow, sir," Sugawara says.  
If he can make it through the door behind Shirabu, he could probably find a way around the factory floor. But he'd need to adjust for his own lack of mobility. His wound is still very much dragging him down and he’s not going to be running anywhere far, or with any speed.   
He's really going to have to steal one of those automatic rifles, he thinks feverishly.

In front of him, Shirabu smiles, an expression that is mildly disconcerting on him. “You've been seeing a lot of unusual things the last week, I would guess. Marks that won't die, rock stars that don't age, blood everywhere. Even that lover of yours, the coffee boy. He's not all human, is he?”  
“So you knew?” Sugawara says, almost imperceptibly inching towards the guard at his side.   
“It’s my duty to know these things, Sugawara,” Shirabu says, eyes burning. “I knew, for instance, that killing Semi Eita would require several... stages. You were merely the first. Whittle him down a little before someone else swoops in to finish the job. I’m sad to say you didn’t even do that right.”  
Shirabu turns back to look out over the factory floor, and Sugawara sees an opportunity.  
He kicks out, hitting the man next to him on the knee, and he rolls out of the way as the two guards jump to attention.  
He comes to a halt against a wall, swallowing down a pained moan as his wound protests, and tears the bandage off his chest. The firearm he's hidden underneath it is tiny, no bigger than his palm, and it has three bullets.  
The first enters the neck of the bodyguard in the corner coming his way. The second hits a guy aiming a rifle at him. A clean shot. Right between the eyes.  
Sugawara looks around for an exit, but suddenly Shirabu is on top of him and on instinct, he shoots.

The bullet enters the Lieutenant's chest mere centimetres from the gun’s nozzle, and he can see a cloud of fabric and skin form behind him, where it exits.  
Shirabu grins.  
“Fuck,” Sugawara mutters.  
“Indeed,” Shirabu says. “You should know better by now.”  
Guard number three has scrambled back up and is clumsily readying his weapon, but Shirabu waves a hand. The man stands rigid, keeping Sugawara in his sight.  
“Is that what this is?” Sugawara asks, trying to gain his breath as he holds his still very sore wound. “Some power struggle between vampires?”  
“That’s one way to see it,” Shirabu says. “Let me show you something, Koushi.”   
He takes a step back and starts unbuttoning his shirt.  
Sugawara blinks, temporarily struck numb. Shirabu’s chest is a trail map of scars. Gold coloured tubes are grafted into the skin, knots and bolts stick out in places. He looks like a failed experiment to some mad scientist, a sad creature made up of stitches and metal and pain. But he’s very much walking around. Even with the hole in his chest.  
It’s small, blackened from the heat of the gun flash, and it grows wider as it travels through Shirabu’s body. Sugawara can see through it, to the wall and the guard standing motionless as he aims a rifle at his face.  
“Looks painful, doesn’t it?” Shirabu says when he sees Sugawara gawp. “I was never given immortality, you see. Not like him. I had to carve my own path toward greatness. For instance: did you know there's a specific type of army ant in Papua New Guinea whose fluids have incredible regenerative abilities?”  
Shirabu turns and walks to the back wall, where he opens a cabinet.   
“It takes a lot of work, of course, and years of study and… experimentation, but it’s amazing what you can do with alchemy and some perseverance.”  
Sugawara stares at the man’s back. His bullet travelled through Shirabu’s ribcage and exploded out of the other side, leaving shredded skin and singed edges in its wake. Part of his shirt has melted from the heat of the blast and gold liquid leaks out of him.   
Shirabu grabs a small bottle, no bigger than a soda can. The liquid inside looks like a light yellowy version of mercury. He drinks it down in one gulp and slowly the hole closes, skin and flesh growing rapidly until it looks like there was never a gunshot wound.  
He pulls a lab coat out of the cabinet and dons it, coming back towards Sugawara.  
“Do you know how precious vampirism is, Koushi?” Shirabu asks his gaping prisoner. “It's immortality. True immortality, for a price that neither of us would scoff at. It is the ability to turn the world to your own devices. And what does the idiot do? He gets _bored_ with it. He leaves a trail of dead girls wherever he goes and he makes vampires out of _roadies._ ”  
He spits out that last word and starts buttoning up the coat. “Semi Eita had to die because he's a nuisance that draws attention to the supernatural. I work hard to keep this a secret. It's valuable knowledge and he... he just sings about it on a stage.”  
Sugawara frowns, head starting to hurt.  
“Does Oikawa know?”  
“No,” Shirabu says. “Not yet, at least. He may, in time, if he proves himself. I have guided the Aoba clan for many years, and several of the heads were informed. But if Oikawa keeps stealing my shipments and sticking his nose in places it doesn’t belong, he may not live long.”  
Gears click into place in Sugawara's head.  
“Is... that what happened to Nobuteru?”  
Shirabu gives him a wry smile. “Let's just say I made our old clan head an offer, and he refused.”

He cracks his neck.  
“So,” he says. “What about you?”  
Sugawara shakes his head. “No. Whatever you're offering. The answer is no.”  
“Quick to reply,” Shirabu says. “But what I'm offering is a taste of immortality, and a way for Karasuno to be lifted up through the ranks.”  
“No,” Sugawara repeats.  
“And here I thought you'd do anything for that brother of yours.”  
“You know nothing about my brother,” Sugawara says coldly. “He would never want me to become a mindless drone.”  
“No one said anything about being mindless, Koushi. But I suppose it was never meant to be. I half expected coffee boy to turn you when you entered his lair bleeding to death.”  
Sugawara chuckles. “He didn't offer me anything but a few bandages and a bag of blood.”  
“And here I thought he really liked you.”  
“I think he does,” Sugawara says thoughtfully.  
“Hmm?”  
“I think he does,” he repeats, “And that's why he wanted it to be my choice. To him this not a ‘gift’ to be taken lightly.”  
Shirabu ponders this for a moment.  
“I'm afraid I won't be giving you much of a choice,” he finally says, and in a second he's in front of Sugawara again. The wounded man tries to dodge but he's not fast enough.

A heavy fist lands in his stomach and Sugawara heaves, while Shirabu pulls him up by one arm.  
“My, but they make them tough over at Karasuno, don't they,” he says.  
Sugawara gasps for breath. He's dizzy, little stars appearing and bursting in front of his eyes.  
He wants to throw up. His stomach contracts and bubbles.  
“Perhaps I'll try one of the others,” Shirabu goes on. “Tanaka perhaps. Or the gentle one. What was his name again? Asahi?”  
“No!”  
Sugawara flails, kicking out weakly against this stupidly strong man holding him in an iron grip.  
“I hope you realize there was another path for you,” Shirabu says, and he climbs the railing, effortlessly hauling Sugawara up with him. His grip is ridiculous, there's a strength there that Sugawara, no matter how desperately he tries, cannot get out of.  
But still, he struggles. And then he's pulled sideways and an intense pain engulfs his right arm.  
He looks up to find a meat hook driven through his forearm.   
“Here's the thing about higher beings,” Shirabu says, letting go of Sugawara. “They require processed food.”  
Sugawara's body sags. The hook tears through his forearm, but not enough to drop him. It snags between the bones in his lower arm and he’s stuck, helplessly dangling like a piece of slaughtered meat while his own blood drips down his arm, onto his head.   
“As you may have noticed, this factory is where I make it,” Shirabu goes on, but Sugawara is barely listening, stubbornly trying to grab the hook with his left hand, to haul himself up.  
“You'll find the process rather efficient. You see, first you enter one of the cubicles over there.” He points at the conveyor full of booths that Sugawara is slowly but surely heading towards. “It fills with a gas that works as a mild sedative, and that makes you a bit more susceptible for what happens next.”  
Sugawara groans and loses his grip on the hook, sagging down again flailing.  
“Afterwards, we inject you. You could consider it a sort of preservative. Compare it to a spider's bite. The liquid enters your veins and it turns the blood, processes it into a better food source. I have yet to find a way to make it painless, I'm afraid.”  
“Oh my god, you're sick,” Sugawara grunts, clawing at the hook holding him.  
Shirabu sighs.  
“I'm disappointed, Koushi. I should not have expected you to understand.”  
He shakes his head sadly.  
“Goodbye then,” he says, and walks out of the room.

Sugawara sways, biting at the pain as he tries to clear his head.  
Ahead of him, the sedative boxes open and close in succession.   
A door opens, a hook is sent in, and the door closes again.   
The box moves on, the next room comes up, the next hook goes in.  
Think, Sugawara pleads with himself. If he gets sedated, it's all over.  
A door opens and the hook right before him is sent in.  
Sugawara watches it disappear, and the double doors slide shut. They're heavy and metal.  
“Oh no.” He moans as the plan forms clearly inside his mind.  
If he had time. If he had strength.  
If he had anything other than complete despair.  
He knows what he has to do, and he hates every aspect of it.   
He looks down. The drop to the factory floor below is at least three meters.  
“Oh god,” he whispers to himself.  
A door opens, and he's pulled inside.  
“Oh fuck oh fuck.”  
And Sugawara swings. He lunges forward and his feet land on the back of the cubicle.   
His cage rattles with a heavy thump.   
Sugawara startles at the sound. He takes a breath.   
With desperate effort he kicks off, hoping to god that he has enough power to make it.   
The heavy iron doors behind him are closing with brutal, industrialized efficiency and Sugawara leaps, swinging back out again.   
His legs and his torso slip through, moments before the doors shut with a forceful and altogether vicious crunch.  
Any sense of relief he feels at making it quickly vanishes when he notices the burning in his right arm. He’s outside, but the box took his hand and a part of his forearm and suddenly he’s falling.  
He screams as he drops down to the factory floor.  
He manages to roll, taking most of the falling damage, but when he comes to a standstill, he's left staring in shock at his own arm.  
“Oh god. Ohgodohgod.”  
His hand is gone. His right hand is gone and his forearm is reduced to a stump with shreds of skin and flesh hanging off it like rags on a hippie's dress.   
Red drips from what remains, blood soaking into his shirt and streaking the floor.  
He sits back and blinks. He’s fairly sure he can feel it. He can wiggle his fingers and feel it.   
The ghost of it. Gone.  
A door slams shut on the platform above him and it kicks him out of his stupor.   
“Fuck. Fucking… fuck,” Sugawara whispers to himself. He gets up, wobbling, and runs off the factory floor, into a hallway to the side.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heya! Thanks for making it this far.  
> So this was the first of the 'gore' chapters. Let me know what you think!


	10. Cold as Death Itself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sugaware continues to have a bad time.

 

Sugawara Koushi stumbles around the darkened hallways of the factory, actively bleeding out.  
He knows this. He can feel it.   
It's a very strange feeling to know you're dying, and Sugawara isn't too happy about the fact that he can now recognize it.  
He's a bathtub slowly being drained, just like on that roof a week ago.  
It's an interesting state to be in. In a way, he's perfectly calm. His mind is clear, because there's not that many options open to him.   
He either finds something to stop the bleeding, or he dies.   
It's that simple. It is blissfully simple. Time goes slower, and decisions line up.  
And in another, very bright way, he's panicking. Dear god, is he panicking.  
Every shred of survival instinct he has is screaming at him, clawing its way up the walls in sheer blind terror. It blurs his vision, making him squint against the shadows.  
His right arm is a limp stump of flesh and he tries not to look at it as it dangles there, dripping blood like a leaky faucet.  
He tries to focus on the rooms he passes. Find something. Maybe a rope to make a tourniquet.  
“How the hell are you gonna make a tourniquet with one hand, Koushi,” he groans under his breath.

He finally steps into what looks like a lab, eyes darting around in a haze until he sees it.  
“Oh nooo,” Sugawara whines.   
Not again.   
Not this again.   
How many times?  
He walks up to the squat white cask and kneels next to it, trying to figure out how to open this thing with one hand.  
It’s stubborn. Wilful. Cold. Fussy.   
His shaking fingers scrape around the lid. They push underneath the safety rim and scrabble at the handles.  
He finally manages to pull the lid off and a wave of frozen air washes over him.  
Sugawara whimpers, knitting his eyebrows together.  
Blind panic bangs on the walls of his mind, scratches at the stone until its nails are gone.  
Adrenaline runs through his veins.

He shoves the sleeve of his left arm into his mouth, biting down on the cotton. With what little control he has left in his right arm, he places it over the cask.  
He takes a breath and pushes it down into the liquid nitrogen.  
His arm seizes up immediately. It hurts so much more than he could have possibly imagined.  
More than losing his fucking hand. More than being stabbed in the side.  
More than dying.  
The cold bites at his arm with a million sharp little crystals, it burns with a searing flame.  
Sugawara clenches his teeth onto the fabric in his mouth and muffles a low cry. Tears spring up in his eyes and he needs every last bit of willpower not to scream or pass out. He holds his arm there, fighting his body, his own instinct, until he's certain it's closed up and he falls back, lands flat on the floor with a stretched out sob.  
“Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.”  
Sugawara closes his eyes and tries to will the pain away. It's a throbbing, pulsating wall that takes up most of his right side now, and he's afraid to look.  
“Ohhhhh god.”  
There are footsteps above him. He needs to move.  
“Fuck.”  
He sits up, tries to calm his breathing.  
His hands are shaking.  
He blinks  
His hand is shaking and he grapples the desk behind him, hoists himself up.  
On the back wall of the lab he spots a small medicine cabinet and he lurches over, scours it, dropping boxes and bottles all over the floor.  
Small bandages, cough drops, some disinfectant. He empties the bottle over his arm without looking.  
And a box of painkillers.  
He ponders.   
He decides to take three, swallows them down without water, and shoves the rest of the box in the front pocket of his hoodie.

When Sugawara turns around, Shirabu is standing in the doorway to the hall. He tilts his head.  
“You... are still standing,” he says.  
“You did say Karasuno is tough,” Sugawara croaks, inching along the wall.  
Blind panic screams inside his mind, howls at the ceiling, pulls at its hair.  
“That's not... exactly what I said, Koushi.”  
Shirabu calmly steps into the lab and Sugawara moves, slowly, along the wall.   
He doesn’t let Shirabu out of his sight. As if he's a snake ready to strike.  
This is what it’s like, Sugawara realizes with startling clarity. This is what the mouse feels when it's spotted by a predator.  
This is what went through all those marks, when they noticed the red dot of the sniper, felt the cold metal of a gun pressed against their skin.  
When they looked into Sugawara's eyes.  
It's not a good feeling.

Sugawara makes calculations in his head. Or tries to.  
Weight, force, distance, divided by blood loss and possibly multiplied by adrenalin.  
He has no idea what he's doing. He _knows_ this.  
“I take it you're not ready to give up?” Shirabu says, eyeing Sugawara's not-arm. “The sedative was supposed to be a humane thing you know.”  
There's mild disappointment in his voice. Shirabu is speaking to him like a father scolding a child and Sugawara feels anger flare up inside him.  
He says nothing, keeps moving slowly along the wall until he's in position.

The options are very clear and simple when you don't have many of them.  
“None of what you're doing here is humane,” he says, steeling his jaw. “You're just a monster making more monsters.”  
Shirabu sighs and glares. “That's a lot of moral judgement, for a hit man.”  
He turns to Sugawara, and his eyes are glowing with a sickly yellow light.  
Shirabu leaps.  
Sugawara ducks, grabs the open canister of liquid nitrogen and pulls at it with a strength that surprises even him. He throws the contents up, splashing them against a flying Shirabu.  
The golden vampire flails in the air and lets out a high pitched shriek. Sugawara dodges sideways. He sprints out the laboratory door without looking back.  
More footsteps are coming his way and he runs.  
“Oy!”  
A shot rings out and Sugawara flings himself into a stairwell.  
“Ah, there you are.” The cold voice of Shirabu comes from somewhere behind him and Sugawara, wide eyed, peeks around the corner.  
The goon stands in the middle of the hallway and lowers his weapon.  
“Mister Shirabu, sir?”  
His face is slack, shocked as he watches his boss step out of the lab.  
Shirabu is... not looking good. His lab coat is in tatters, stripped or burned away, and underneath that, his skin is patched. It looks like it melted in places. It is ripped, scarred, stretched.  
The liquid must have hit him in the face, too, because one of Shirabu's eyes is gone, and the skin of his cheek hangs limply from his jaw.  
The most surreal thing about this, apart from the fact that he's still walking, is that there's no blood.  
The only blood Sugawara can see in this hallway is his own, a smear of it on the floor, a trail to follow into the lab.  
Shirabu doesn't bleed. But he _is_ leaking. A shiny, golden fluid drips from him, glistens across the scraps of skin and exposed flesh.  
“Come here,” he says, and his bodyguard complies, taking a step forward.  
“Sir?”  
Shirabu lays two hands on his shoulders, and with a move that is intensely violent and way faster than it has any right to be, he tears his bodyguard apart. Yellow metallic liquid sprays from the man as he sags onto his knees, dying without so much as a sigh.  
“I'm sorry old friend,” Shirabu’s voice says, “but I am very hungry.”  
Sugawara can only hear it as he sprints up the stairs.  
He wants to shut down. He wants to vomit. He's fairly certain his brain just wants to stop working altogether right now, but he's equally certain that he'll die if it does.  
So he runs.

 

 

Tendou Satori jumps from building to crumbling building, following a trail of _wrong.  
_ He doesn't like it one bit, because the smell makes his teeth grow and his fingers go long.  
At least it's dark here, he thinks, as he makes his way across the blacked out neighbourhood.  
The scent gets heavier as he gains up to Semi until he eventually sees movement.  
It's a factory of sorts. It looks like it's about to fall apart, but it has a bunch of black vans and cars parked in front of it, and about a dozen armed guards at the entrance.  
Tendou frowns. That's a _lot_ of armed guards.  
He sits on his haunches on a roof corner, observing the square like a gargoyle guarding a cathedral.  
The smell of shitty lemon is pretty thick in the air and the men are nervous, walking back and forth, not chatting to each other at all. They're almost wooden in their movements.  
Smartly dressed, though. Black suits, most of them, shiny shoes.  
Ah shit, Tendou thinks, they're yakuza aren't they.  
He wonders briefly if Semi is already inside, or if he's also out here, thinking of a plan somewhere inside his maddened brain. Either way, Tendou does not look forward to being shot by a dozen automatic rifles at once, so he sneaks off the roof and jumps to the next one, circling round the factory until a familiar smell alerts him.  
Human waste.  
Specifically, that tangy mix of sweat and urine and skin and hair that comes with living outside without a proper bathroom for a few days. He creeps across a tarred roof on all fours, following the smell to what looks like a loading bay. Next to it is a small door, guarded by one dude smoking a cigarette.  
Slightly better odds, Tendou thinks.  
He inches across an electric cable, silently making his way to the factory roof. From there he climbs down, claws on his hands and feet sticking to the crumbling wall like he's the world's sharpest tree frog.  
It goes well, until a piece of the wall crumbles right when he's nearly behind the smoking guy.  
The man looks up, turns around, and Tendou grins at him.  
The guard's face goes slack and he stares, cigarette falling from his mouth, at the creature hanging upside down from the wall behind him, all teeth and claws and wild red hair and piercing eyes.  
Tendou sighs, drops to the ground and punches the man's lights out.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi is out of breath when he reaches the top of the stairs.  
He's running on empty, he thinks, but at least he's running.  
He leans against a wall briefly to regain his strength, when loud pops make him look up.  
Gunfire.  
He inches to a nearby window overlooking the parking lot and he can see men running, firing at something big and unhinged and screaming.  
“Semi?” Sugawara mutters, and he doesn't know why he thinks that, because the creature doesn't look like Semi at all. It looks like a cross between the Hulk and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Its body is overgrown, stocky and thick, almost the shape of a square box. Strange bulbous growths dot its chest. Its arms and legs are completely out of proportion, too long for even the huge body, with long claws that make it look really painful to walk. Its head is small and misshapen, teeth growing outside of its mouth.  
Sugawara watches in mute shock as bullets riddle the creatures skin and it moans, swiping at three of the men and crushing them against a wall.  
He becomes aware of footsteps and he runs again, slower than he'd like, down the hallway. He has just cleared the windows when a hand comes up and yanks him backwards, turning him around.  
Shirabu is centimetres from his face. His expression is serious, mildly irritated perhaps, too blank for this situation, and he pulls back and clocks Sugawara right in the jaw.  
Sugawara flies, face stinging and head a pool of white noise, before he hits the floor with a dull smack. He grunts, struggling to stay conscious, and he looks up into two very long, very spiky claws.  
They're wet with something shiny.  
“No,” Sugawara pleads. “Please no. Just kill me outright.”  
Shirabu steps forward and puts a heavy foot on his chest, stopping any more attempts at movement.  
“You'd think yakuza lieutenants would be better at following orders,” Shirabu remarks, and Sugawara flails hopelessly trying to get away while two sharp picks pierce the skin of his neck, tainting him with poison.  
“It shouldn't take too long,” Shirabu says matter-of-factly.  
Sugawara can feel the acid coursing through his veins as he lies motionless, crushed under the foot of his superior.  
Blind panic grows and takes over what little is left of his mind.  
He screams.

 

 

Tendou Satori enters the building and notices that on the inside, it's brand spanking new.  
Frowning, he pads through the long hallway. The smell of desperate human being is heavier here, probably amplified by fear.  
There are no guards in this part of the building and this worries him, until he hears banging and gunfire from further away. Someone's causing a hell of a diversion in that square.  
“Thank you Semi, you old fuck,” he mumbles to himself.  
He follows the trail of scared people around the loading dock and through a hallway. The scent disperses, mingles with shitty lemon and finally disappears into a large hall that looks suspiciously like some kind of meat processing plant, with conveyor belts and big rooms that might be giant fridges.   
“Don't be soylent green, don't be soylent green,” Tendou prays while he stops in front of one of them. It has thick looking walls and a rubber sealed door.  
“Please be alive,” Tendou begs as he breaks the lock with a well-placed punch, and opens it.  
The inside of the fridge is... not what he was expecting.  
For one, it's barely a fridge. It's chilly, but not cold.  
For two: fridges aren't supposed to have bunk beds.  
Tendou blinks, and several pairs of confused eyes look back at him.  
It's a big room with about a dozen people in it. There's a TV. Along the edges are beds and in one corner there appears to be some kind of toilet thing.  
“Mister Tendou?” a voice pipes up from the back.  
“Goshiki. Oh thank fuck,” Tendou says, and he hides his hands behind his back.  
“Wow. How did you find me?”  
“Are you ok?” Tendou asks, scanning the room. No one here appears to be dead, at least. There’s mostly men in here, only a few women, and they’re all fairly young.   
They look sluggish and pale though.  
“Did they hurt you?”   
“It's a bit blurry,” Goshiki says. “I was helping at the camp and then suddenly these men came and they pointed guns at us and they took everyone. I don't know where the rest are.”  
“Alright, time to go,” Tendou nods.  
“I can't believe you came for me!”  
“Uh, sure kid. Look, I opened a back door for you guys. It's right down the hall. Off you go.”  
Behind him, there's a large crash, and he's definitely hearing gunfire now.  
“Like now. You need to leave now,” Tendou adds. “I'll see if I can find your buddies.”  
Goshiki nods and several of the other people are getting up now.  
“Right that way,” Tendou says. “Chop, chop.” And he turns around to check down the hall while behind him the crowd silently files out.  
“Do you need help, mister Tendou?” Goshiki shouts after him.  
“N-no!” Tendou says, only barely managing to keep his claws hidden in the shadows. “Nonono. I'm good. You take care of them. This is very important. Make sure they get out of here in one piece.”  
Goshiki nods thoughtfully and Tendou rounds a corner, letting out a small breath and shaking his fingers. Why won't the fuckers shrink?  
With a groan he gives up and walks on, finding a similar fridge-slash-prison-whatever-thing. He opens this one too and finds... ok, this one really is a fridge. Large _things_ are hanging on hooks from the ceiling, covered in black bags. It feels like a meat locker, but Tendou would rather not know what's in those bags.  
He doubles back, notices everyone made it out and squares his shoulders.  
The gunfire stopped, which is either a good sign, or a really very bad sign.  
Cracking his neck, Tendou sets off to find out.

 

 

Sugawara Koushi lies on a cold white tiled floor, dying.  
He's absolutely certain of this. His blood, what little he has left, feels like it's turning into muck. The pain is unbelievable and he would really, really like to pass out now.  
Outside, the gunfire has stopped and Shirabu walks toward the window to look.  
Sugawara's eyes are heavy.  
Something roars outside, a primal scream that makes him squint and he sees Shirabu blink, take a step back and then duck as something huge crashes through the window, taking part of the wall with it.  
Sugawara vaguely registers that the creature has feathered light-coloured hair, with dark tips, before his head lolls back and he closes his eyes.

“What have you done to me you bastard!” the creature growls.  
“That's an unfortunate side effect, I must say,” Shirabu answers, voice cold as ever.  
There are sounds of fighting, heavy thuds and broken glass.  
Something is tugging at Sugawara's hand.  
“Are you fighting it?” Shirabu asks in the distance, voice sounding almost like a concerned doctor, “because I'm fairly certain vampire blood should react better to-” there is a crash and Semi roars.  
“Perhaps it's evolved further than first anticipated,” Shirabu is now saying, and his words are followed by a grunt as something slams into the floor, hard enough to make it shake.  
The voices and the sounds of fighting fade, moving away from Sugawara while he is dragged along the floor.   
His eyes flutter, what little light there is stinging them, but he can see that he is hauled into a small office and propped up against a wall.  
Someone pulls up his sleeve and there's a small prick.   
The effect is almost instantaneous. Fire travels through his veins, the burning cutting a bright path through his daze.  
“Ah? Aaaaahh!”  
A hand is slapped over his mouth and Sugawara is suddenly wide awake, the taste of metal and leather in his mouth, eyes wide open and watering.  
“Shhhh, don't draw attention to us, you idiot!”  
He blinks, trying to see through the tears.  
“Iwaizumi?”  
The Aoba Lieutenant holds him down while sharp liquid streams through his body, making him twitch in pain. It hurts so much but at the same time it makes him feel very much alive.  
“It's an antidote,” Iwaizumi grunts in his ear. “Or it should be. Calm down and try to stay still.”  
Sugawara tries. He really does, but his body wants to scream, flail, do anything that would distract him from the scorching heat currently fraying the edges of every single nerve he has.  
Iwaizumi - stronger, merciless - holds him still and he lies there, convulsing, for what feels like forever, until he regains some self-control.

He sags and Iwaizumi lets go.  
“You ok?” he says mildly.  
Sugawara shakes his head and Iwaizumi grins, taking his hand off his mouth.  
“You do look like shit,” he admits.  
Sugawara just leans his head back and breathes, treasuring every drop of air passing his lips.  
“Iwaizumi,” he croaks after a while. “What the fuck is going on... sir.”  
His superior chuckles. “I was hoping you'd know.” He hands Sugawara an opened water bottle. “This shit is too weird for me. What the fuck is Shirabu even doing?”  
“Vampire,” Sugawara says between grateful sips.  
“What?”  
“They're vampires. Sort of. Both him and the other one.”  
“Are you fucking kidding me?”  
Sugawara gives him a blank look. “Do I look like I’m in a position to make jokes, sir?”  
“I guess not.”  
“We need to leave,” Sugawara says. “We're no match for them. Bullets won't hurt them much.”  
Iwaizumi sighs. “Should have asked for flame throwers,” he grumbles.  
“Sir?”

 


	11. Red and Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things end.

Tendou Satori runs up the stairs, pulled along by the very powerful scent of Semi, and stops in the middle of the hallway.  
Jeesh, Yamagata wasn't kidding.   
A monstrous, deformed version of what is unquestionably Semi Eita is standing there, punching some blond guy in the face. His opponent sways, wagging backwards before springing up again and attacking with two needlepoint fingers. Semi grabs the hand, twists it around and throws the blond down the hallway, straight at Tendou.  
“Ok, wow,” Tendou says, sliding under the flying man and sprinting by the wall to the other side.  
No way is he getting involved in this fight.  
“I'll, uh, let you guys sort each other out,” he mutters, backing away into a nearby office.  
When he turns around, he's looking straight into the barrel of a gun.  
“Hi?”  
"You again?" mister Whatever says.  
“Oh look, it's mister tranq asshole,” Tendou growls.  
The man knits his eyebrows together and cocks the gun.  
“Wait! Please. Mister Iwaizumi! Don't hurt him,” a voice from the side says.  
“Suga?”  
Tendou feels his world topple very slowly. Question drift by like leaves in fall. What. When. How.

The man apparently called Iwaizumi angrily takes a step back.  
"You're gonna defend this guy? Do you know what this fucker is? Look at his hands."  
Tendou blinks and looks down.   
Right. Those.  
“I'm aware of his... condition,” Suga says soothingly, “But please, he's… he's one of the good guys. Please.”  
That’s an interesting way to put it, Tendou thinks.  
Suga turns to him. “What are you doing here, Satori?” he asks, face full of worry.  
“Uh, saving people? What's he doing here?” Tendou points at Iwaizumi.  
“I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on, “ Iwaizumi grunts.  
"By stalking me?” Tendou folds his arms.  
“Technically, I was following Sugawara.”  
“Why?”  
“Yakuza business,” Iwaizumi says stiffly and Tendou lifts his eyebrows.  
Iwaizumi sighs. “I work for Oikawa, the… everyone’s boss.” He makes a vague gesture at his surroundings. “We've been investigating possible traitors and there was something fishy about the rock star contract. Let's just say I wasn't expecting quite this much crap.”  
Tendou shrugs and turns to Suga. “What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in bed?” he says and it suddenly dawns in him why Suga, beautiful, hurt Suga, is looking so thin. “What the hell happened to your arm!”  
“I, uh, got kidnapped,” Suga says. “It’s a long story.”  
He looks up to see the slowly dawning horror in Tendou’s face.  
“Your people should be ok though,” he adds quickly. “Look, Satori, I appreciate the effort, but we have to leave. We need to get out of here before those two out there have resolved their fight.”  
Tendou shakes his head. “I'm not going anywhere.”  
Suga blinks at him, eyes worried again, but he stands his ground. For once in he's life he's gonna fix things. He won't ignore shit, and he won't walk away.   
Or so he tells himself.  
“I promised someone I would try and get Semi back and that blond fucker, what's his name?”  
“Shirabu,” Iwaizumi says.  
“That Shirabu fucker tried to have my ex killed, who, admittedly, is an asshole, but still. And then he kidnapped my employee and now he's trying to fucking kill you. Someone should probably put a stop to him, maybe.”  
Sugawara sighs. “I understand that, Satori, but this has nothing to do with you. Like Iwaizumi said, it's yakuza business.”  
“It's vampire business.”  
“He's not really a vampire though?” Suga argues.  
“What do you _mean_ he's not a vampire? He's fucking indestructible by the looks of it.”  
Suga opens his mouth to answer, but Iwaizumi interrupts him.  
“Alright, alright,” he says. “If you two could stop bickering for five seconds…” He nods at the hallway outside. Shirabu lies crumpled in a heap by a wall, Semi looming over him.  
“Ahh,” Tendou says, “This is the point where I try to talk down a raging tiger.”  
He steps out of the office, stopping only to lean back and grin at the two behind him. “This would be an excellent time to run, by the way,” he says.  
Iwaizumi nods and pulls Suga up, supporting him on his shoulder.

Tendou walks out into the hall and takes a deep breath.  
“Semisemi?”  
The creature, busy shredding mister Shirabu, stills and turns to him.  
“You, uh, ok there?” Tendou asks.  
“Satori.” Semi, angry, horrifically deformed Semi, frowns.   
He's wounded. Quite badly, in fact. There are deep gashes in his already stretched skin. He's bleeding some kind of weird fluid, a swirl of red and gold. It's gathering in a pool at his feet and it would be quite pretty, if it didn't have such a toxic effect.  
Fitting, Tendou thinks.  
Semi takes a step back and sinks onto the floor, leaning against a nearby piece of wall. The bulbous growths are slowly shrinking again, draining together with the rest of him.   
He doesn't look like he has a lot of energy left and Tendou finds himself walking towards him, ready, again, to offer himself up.  
“Don't come closer,” Semi growls, voice deep and rattling, like air in catacombs. “That stuff will fuck you up,” he says.  
Tendou stills, unsure. The smell of vampire master slash lemon is heavy here, and it is doing weird things with his brain. It almost feels like the smell alone is taking out the parts of him that keep the primal urges caged.  
“What are you doing here, Satori?” Semi asks.  
“Well, you see. Uh. My employee got kidnapped by this here dude,” he points at the blond and gold pile of ragged flesh on the floor, “and then my, uh, maybe boyfriend also got kidnapped and Yamagata called me saying he's worried about you. Turns out you're all fucking here.”  
Semi lets out a raspy sigh. “Ahh shit, Yamagata,” he says. “Is... Is he ok?”  
“No thanks to you.”  
Semi smiles. “I'll take that as a yes then. You always did clean up my shit.”  
“I've about had it with said shit, Semi,” Tendou sighs.  
The rock star tilts his head and looks down at his own battered body. “I think you won't have to put up with it much longer,” he says.  
“Oh for fuck's sake, Semisemi, like that's gonna-” Tendou starts, but he stops when he notices movement from the corner of his eye.

Shirabu is inexplicably rising again.  
Tendou stifles a groan because really, fuck vampires. Or whatever this fucker is.  
Shirabu sits up slowly. His eyes open, and there are no pupils there. Fully golden eyeballs twitch, skipping from Semi to Tendou and behind him, to the two yakuza trying to make their way out.   
“There's no end to you, is there?” Semi says. He sounds tired.   
Shirabu stands up, gaze travelling back to the bleeding man sitting against the wall. “I am a higher being,” he answers, and his voice doesn't sound like a single person, but like a whole fucking choir. “There is no stopping me. My kind will eventually rule this earth, as yours has failed to do these past centuries.”  
Semi scoffs. “Hey Satori."  
“Hmm?”  
“Tell Yamagata I'm sorry. For everything. You too. For all the shit I put you through.”  
“Uh, ok?” Tendou says. “Is this the time for tearful... Ohhh.”  
Semi drags himself up the wall.   
In front of them, Shirabu's skin is slowly unravelling. Pieces of it break off and sag to the floor, revealing a yellowed sheen.  
“Just don't let that stuff touch you, ok?” Semi says, and he smiles and winks.  
Then he kicks off from the wall. He takes a running start and lunges at Shirabu, throwing the both of them through a window onto the factory floor below.  
“Is that gonna work?” Iwaizumi asks from somewhere behind Tendou.  
“Well if you hurt him enough, he'll slow down eventually, probably,” Tendou points out.   
“The gold stuff heals him, though,” Suga says. “This factory is full of it.”  
“Well, shit,” Tendou says, watching with worry as the two men fight on the floor below.   
Semi has always been much stronger than Tendou, and right now he’s slamming Shirabu into a conveyor belt, hard enough to bend the whole machine with a tortured shriek.   
Shirabu stands up and Semi punches, again and again, sharp claws sinking into the gangster's body and coming back out glistening in gold. Shirabu sways with every hit, but he does not fall.  
Something is happening, though.  
The guy is becoming less and less recognizable as a human figure. His skin has almost completely come off, revealing a golden metallic shape, an almost amorphous entity that grabs Semi’s by the shoulders and flings him across the room like a plywood guitar.  
They're quickly taking down half the factory floor, but are both still standing.   
For now.

“He’s not gonna make it,” Tendou grumbles, watching Semi limply vault over a conveyor belt to kick his opponent in the maybe-face. “Semi is not going to make it.”  
“That sucks,” Iwaizumi says. “I wish we had fire.”  
“This isn't that kind of factory,” Tendou answers mournfully. “No vat of melted steel or anything either. I checked.”  
“Well there's liquid nitrogen,” Suga says and both men look at him.  
“In the lab, there might be more than one cask of the stuff. It hurt him plenty before. It should at least slow him down.”  
Tendou sighs and watches two overpowered mutants duke it out below.  
The smell of gold swirled blood is really getting to him.   
He feels his body becoming not his own. His fingers haven't shrunk, and the stinging in his joints tells him they're growing again.   
Man, he hates it when they do that. He's not even sure if he can ever get them back to normal.  
He may as well go out with a bang, he tells himself.  
He was going to fix things, wasn't he? He can't keep ignoring it. The people disappearing. The sheer amount of human misery that a place like this is going to wreak.  
“Right,” he says, squaring his shoulders. “You, Iwaizumi, take Suga the hell out of here.”  
Iwaizumi nods mutely.  
“You, Suga, look away for a bit.”  
“Huh?”  
“I'm probably going to turn into some kind of hulk creature. I'd rather you remember me as the hot barista if it's all the same to you.”  
“Satori...” Suga's eyes are soft, full of compassion and warmth and Tendou wants to drown in them.  
Man, fuck his love of light haired and unattainable.  
“Take care of him,” he tells Iwaizumi, and he jumps down.  
He drops to the factory floor and dodges a Semi flying by.   
With panic enduced speed, he turns and grabs a nearby drum, hitting Shirabu in the head with it.  
Then he runs off toward the labs.  
All Semi has to do is keep him occupied for just a little longer, he thinks.  
But he'd better hurry. His friend is badly hurt now, he could see that much in the split second he came whizzing past.  
Tendou sprints into the corridor and follows the trail of Suga's blood to a laboratory of sorts. Predictably, the place is a mess. Through the next door, he finds a second lab.  
There's two of them in here. White casks that feel cold to the touch, even through all the insulation.  
“Please work,” Tendou mutters, as the pries both of them open and hauls them along with him, back to the factory floor.

Once there, he sees that the fight is over, and he is too late.  
Shirabu has torn off, or possibly even bitten off, Semi's head.  
“You fucking asshole!” Tendou screams and the creature, now no more than a vaguely person shaped golden blob, looks up.  
“So is that your final form?” Tendou says.  
It charges.  
“Oh shi-”  
Tendou tries to dodge a lunging monster coming at him way too fast, and the creature smashes into his side, sending him flying.  
He hits the wall with a heavy thud and sags down, not even able to move before Shirabu is on top of him again. Five fingers, sharp like ice picks, drive themselves through his body, piercing Tendou until they hit the wall behind him.  
He hisses. His entire side is burning and he can pretty much feel the plague move through his body.  
In a last ditch attempt, Tendou kicks out and throws Shirabu off him.   
The needles pull back, drag blood and gold with them.  
“Fuckfuckfuck,” Tendou grunts as he gets up, diving to avoid another charge. The creature crashes into the wall behind him.  
Tendou scrambles upright, but it's like working a puppet on a string.  
His body is definitely getting away from him now. With the acid coursing through his veins, his limbs stretch, his teeth grow long and pointy. His fingers are no longer fingers. They’re not even claws. They're needles, long and sharp and hard.  
With ex-Shirabu coming up behind him again, he sprints off as best as he can, a lumbering scarecrow trying to learn how to walk on stilts.  
Turns out, learning to walk is not a fast way of moving. He feels a sharp kick in his back and it sends him sailing across the floor.

There are noises coming his way. Shouts, footsteps.   
He turns around and punches his opponent, barely making contact before his fist sinks into a pool of gold.   
It burns his skin.  
Tendou screams and pulls back. Shirabu's shell ripples, restoring itself.  
Getting desperate, Tendou grabs a piece of nearby railing and slams it at his opponent, watching in mute shock as it goes _through_ the mobster, his shape oozing through the holes in and around the metal until it falls to the floor with a soft clang.  
It is at about this point that the doors of the factory fly open and several armed men in black suits pile in.  
Oh good. The cavalry.  
The creature turns to look at them.  
Tendou blinks, remembers that he had something to do.   
He runs off, back to the canisters, while the dudes with the guns are busy getting over the sheer ridiculousness of the scene they just walked into.   
He reaches the first vat of liquid nitrogen and kicks it as he runs past. It hits the tiles with a resounding clang and topples, spilling winter across the factory floor. The creature, already following him, skids to a halt, but this time it is not fast enough.  
It hits the puddle of liquid nitrogen and makes a wheezing, screeching sound.  
The men are yelling now. There is the unmistakable sound of guns being readied.  
Tendou huffs and pulls on the second cask. He turns around and throws the contents over his opponent, as around him, the mobsters open fire.  
Hot lead pierces his skin, drives itself into his hated elongated limbs.   
A bullet shatters his skull and he can feel it travel through his head, a trail of heat going straight from his temple to just above his ear. He stumbles back, body swaying as more and more bullets hit him, ripples in a dead pond.  
Somewhere in the distance someone is screaming for them to stop.  
It has little effect, as lead hits his shoulder, and finally his side, and he sags to the ground.  
Before him, Shirabu is, for want of a better word, crumbling.   
Bullets hit the pool of gold, causing ripples, but soon enough Shirabu grows harder, movements turn slower. He flails, uselessly, as golden liquid crystallizes and falls off him in chunks and pieces, till there's nothing left but a small heap of sizzling, shrieking ice.  
Finally, the sound of guns stops.

 

Tendou lies on the factory floor. Dying.   
He’s fairly sure of this.   
His insides are burning. His limbs are tearing themselves apart.  
There's weird growths popping up, too. It's like his entire body is a battle field, different parts of him fighting other parts.  
It's really rather annoying that the whole thing hurts like a motherfucker.  
For some reason, his mind's eye is filled with visions of people, one flicking in front of the other. There's Goshiki, Reon, Eri and Kawanishi. There's his bitch of a mother, too, Yamagata, and Semi as he was before.  
And then a whole bunch of hot and not-so-hot dudes in various states of undress.  
Why is he being offered pictures of all the men he dated in the past ten years, exactly?  
Oh right, he's dying.  
Oh.  
That sucks.

 

“Drop your weapons! That's an order,” comes the harsh voice of Iwaizumi.  
“We came as fast as we could,” someone shouts from a distance. And then: “What the fuck is this place?”  
“Alright, alright. Stay back, no one touch anything. Stay away from the liquid."  
Tendou stops the weird visions in his mind just long enough to listen to people arguing.   
Doors are being slammed. There’s a lot of footsteps.  
“Oh god. Oh god Satori.”  
“Sawamura, come get your lieutenant, this fucker is heavy.”  
More footsteps.   
Tendou is in pain, getting annoyed at how long it seems to take for him to fucking die.  
“Dear god, you can't be serious,” a voice says. It's familiar.  
Oh right.   
Light haired and unobtainable. Heh.  
Fuck, he likes that voice. Why does it sound sad? There's a wretched, pained edge to it.   
He's fairly certain Shirabu disintegrating would be the end of this whole mess.  
Should have fixed all the things.  
Guess not.  
“You've barely tested it, Iwaizumi!” Suga continues. “Vampires don’t work like that, I told you. It could kill him."  
“Dude has twenty bullets in him and one syringe of antidote is what you're worried about?”  
Suga sucks in a laboured breath. “What if the gold is all that's keeping him together?”  
"Well that stuff is going to turn him into whatever happened to the other guy,” Iwaizumi grunts. His voice sounds closer. “Is that a better option?"  
“Ok he'd rather die,” Suga's voice says, “but still...What if we make it worse?"  
“There's always flame throwers.”

Footsteps come closer and Tendou is aware of someone crouching next to him.  
“Well, you know him best, Sugawara. What do you think he wants?” Iwaizumi asks. His voice is rough, but not unkind.  
In the distance, Suga whimpers.  
Tendou opens his eyes and blinks once, startling the yakuza near his head.  
Without a second thought, he grabs the syringe from his hand and stabs it into his neck.  
Wow, that hurts.  
Fire races through his veins and it feels like his skin is bubbling, stretching, deforming.  
“Motherfucker,” Tendou says, and then he mercifully blacks out.

 


	12. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks later.

“Agent Orangerie?”  
“No.”  
“Sick of it Anemone? Hmmm, maybe Sick of it Azalea.”  
“Satoriii,” Suga whines.  
“Oh come on, you're just going to do something boring like 'Flowers by Suga'?”  
“I like that one,” Suga smiles, and he kisses the back of Tendou's neck.  
They're standing in Suga's kitchen, where Tendou is currently drying the last of the dishes.  
Suga rests light fingers on his chest, pulling himself flush to Tendou's back as he rubs his forehead into his boyfriend's skin.  
“Dahlia Kennedys?” Tendou tries, if only to feel the soft breath of Suga's laughter against his back.  
“It doesn't have to be a pun name, you know,” Suga says and he takes a step back, grabbing his mug of tea and bringing it into the living room.  
“Well what's the fun in having a store if you can't even give it a good name?” Tendou frowns. He puts the plate away and follows, sinking into the comfy couch while Princess eyes the both of them from her perch by the window.  
“The point of a store is exchange of goods and services, Satori,” Suga says, taking a seat next to him. “How are you even managing to be profitable?”  
Suga smiles, and he places soft kisses up Tendou's shoulder, left hand snaking its way under his tank top.  
“Suga, what are you doing?” Tendou intones.  
“I'm kissing you,” Suga says, “and I’m going to kiss all those tattoos of yours, too.”  
He ducks under Tendou’s shirt and the soft movement of lips flutters over his skin. It’s giving Tendou goosebumps.  
He leans back and closes his eyes, concentrating on the soft brush of Suga’s mouth and the gentle tug of deft fingers loosening his jeans.  
Suga moves down, little licks and nips drawing a trail across Tendou's abdomen while a firm hand liberates his cock.  
Sparks travel up his spine and Tendou moans, tilting his hips a little in time with a warm mouth.  
A thought strikes and his eyes shoot open.  
“Type Orchid Negative?”  
“Ffakowwiii...” Suga whines.  
“Are you actually trying to talk with your mouth full?”  
This makes Suga giggle and the feeling sends shock waves through Tendou's groin.  
“Dear lord, I need to make you laugh more,” he murmurs, softly brushing Suga’s silver locks from his forehead.  
Bony white fingers slide through Suga’s light hair.  
Tendou startles and pulls back his hand.  
Fuck.  
“Hey Suga, listen,” he says. “Not that I don't.. ahhh, appreciate it but, uh...”  
Suga, beautiful, sexy, somehow still graceful even with his mouth full of dick Suga, looks up and frowns.  
He pulls himself off and sits up, wiping his mouth on his sleeve before grabbing his tea mug.

 

Sugawara Koushi sits quietly for a moment, warming his hand on his mug while the taste of Tendou fades from his mouth.  
He huffs.  
“Ok,” he says, sitting back and sipping from his mug. “Is it the arm?”  
“What?” Tendou’s eyes are wide. His face a clown’s mask of bafflement.  
He’s been getting a lot of it back, Sugawara notes, building himself up again bit by bit. Sugawara is almost afraid of tearing it down again.  
“Do you not want to have sex with me because of the arm?” he asks.  
Tendou frowns. “Of course not. I am the very last person who should be judging you for something like that.”  
“Good, because this arm, or the lack of it, is the reason I am not currently some weird...” Sugawara gestures vaguely with his mug. “Food product.”  
Tendou sighs.  
“I know we don't really talk about it,” Sugawara goes on, “And truth be told I'm not fully done processing all that... stuff, but so far there are no regrets on my part. We saved a bunch of people. Well, you did. And we also inadvertently stopped a conspiracy within my clan that basically sky-rocketed Karasuno's prestige.”  
“Not that you get to enjoy that much,” Tendou mumbles.  
“I refused that promotion, Satori,” Suga barks. “I left. It was my choice.”  
He sighs. He can never hold a rifle again, so leaving his brothers for other pursuits wasn’t an altogether unreasonable option. He’s still not entirely sure if it was the _right_ option, but deep down he can’t help but see it as... convenient.  
An opportunity, even.  
He feels bad just thinking of it like that.  
On the couch next to him, Tendou looks down, eyes trained on his hands.  
“Let's just say that I would prefer it if you were to forget bits,” Tendou stammers. “Look, Suga, I'm...”  
Sugawara sighs and gives him a stern look.  
“Ok, fine,” he says. It's going to take a long time for Tendou to heal, he knows, but that doesn't mean he won't try to help it along.  
Without averting his eyes, he takes Tendou's hand, with the long, pale fingers that he's so fond of, and kisses it. He places his lips on the rough knuckles, before taking each finger, one by one, and gently pressing his lips to it. He takes Tendou's digit and puts it in his mouth, sucking on it softly while he raises an eyebrow.  
Tendou visibly swallows.  
Sugawara leans in. “Tendou Satori, I need you to listen to me,” he says, voice husky against his lover's ear. “You are a hot coffee man with red hair and weird tastes in music and I am very, _very_ into you. I've seen sides of you that you don't like, and you know sides of me that I'm not particularly proud of. It doesn't change the fact that I'm here, being _Very Into Yo_ _u_. Do you understand?”  
Tendou nods slowly.  
“Good. Now I don't know about you, but I am also, right now, extremely sexually frustrated. And while you know that I care for you, and that I will never make you do something you don't want, I am going to tell you, right now, what it is that I want, alright?”  
“Sure?”  
“What I want, more than anything, right now, is for you to take those tight jeans off and place that ass on my dick and ride me like a fucking cowboy aiming for the rodeo cup. Do you understand?”  
Tendou coughs, light blush spreading across his cheeks.  
"Does that sound like something you want to do?"  
“Uh... ok,” Tendou stammers, grin spreading across his face. “I can do that, yeah.”

 

 

“In short, shit is fucked up,” Iwaizumi Hajime explains. He's standing on the top floor of a large glass-and-granite tower.  
“Vampires exist. They're creepy and immortal and they serve shit coffee and shit music. And Shirabu somehow made all that even _worse_. That whole factory was some convoluted way to turn people's blood into, well, food, basically.”  
Iwaizumi sags into a leather chair and drags his palm over his forehead.  
“That's, uh, well… That sounds unpleasant.” Oikawa Tooru says. The current head of the Aoba clan sits behind a large oak desk and thumbs through the report his lieutenant has just given him.  
“And then he fucking drained and bottled it. That's the shipment Matsun and Makki stole, by the way,” Iwaizumi adds. “It's dead people. Please tell me you destroyed that shit.”  
“They're almost done with their investigation,” Oikawa says. He looks up, peering at his lieutenant over horn rimmed glasses.  
“He's been secretly pulling the strings on the clan for dozens of years,” Iwaizumi continues. “Maybe hundreds. Who fucking knows. His men are all over the different families. Turned ones. Mutated vampires, whatever you wanna call it. Mindless Shirabu soldiers. We're still rooting them out. Did I mention it's fucked up?”  
“You did,” Oikawa says, peering at the pages. “Mindless soldiers, you say?”  
“Oikawa...”  
“Immortal, too?”  
Iwaizumi sits up. “No.”  
“What?” Oikawa says. “I'm just thinking out loud. Possibilities are possibilities and-”  
“I burned that place to the ground for a reason,” Iwaizumi says. “There's nothing left, because I knew either you or some other idiot would try to get their hands on this blood stuff.”  
“You should really check with me before making decisions like that, Lieutenant,” Oikawa grumbles.  
“Oh fuck off.”  
His boss pouts. “Mean, Iwa-chan.”

 

 

Sawamura Daichi takes the steps to his office and halts outside the door, listening to the voices shouting loudly from inside.  
“I'm going to destroy you!” Nishinoya yells.  
“Eat bat, fucker!” Tanaka answers.  
Sawamura frowns and steps in.  
His subordinates are sitting on a couch, playing some video game. They're overexcited and loud, because of course they are. Sawamura sighs and crosses the floor.  
“How'd it go?” Nishinoya asks, looking up.  
“It went well,” sawamura says, sending him a small smile. “We've been given a large part of Shirabu's region. Oh, and he liked the milk bread. ”  
“Nice!”  
Sawamura nods. “Yes. We'll have to work hard to keep it though, and they'll be counting on us even more from now on.”  
“Dude, we got this!” Tanaka says. “Where are we going? What's the mission?”  
“For now, just take it easy. I need to draft up some plans with Ennoshita before we do anything. I'll be in my office.”  
His subordinates get back to their game and Sawamura walks through the door to a side room, closing it behind him.  
He pours himself a drink and sags into a chair by his desk with a deep sigh.  
In his pocket is a heavy reinforced paper envelope and he pulls it out, lays it on the desk, fingers drumming next to it.  
He sips and swirls his glass, ice cubes clinking against each other with a dull clacking sound.  
There's a short rap on the door and then Asahi enters.  
“Daichi?”  
“Mm?”  
“How'd it go?”  
“It went well,” Sawamura says, and he sips.  
“But?”  
“But what?”  
“You don't drink unless you're struggling with something, Daichi,” Asahi says, face full of wrinkles. “Don't lie to me, please.”  
With a sigh, Sawamura puts down the glass and gets up from his chair, walking to the window to look outside.  
“Our position has improved,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back.  
“Yes?” Asahi says, letting the words hang in the air. He's standing by the door fiddling with his hands, eyes darting from his boss to the desk and back.  
“We will be getting more work,” Sawamura continues.  
“Oh.” Asahi's shoulders sag and Sawamura turns around, face hard.  
“I'm considering giving this next contract to either Tanaka or Nishinoya. It's not an easy choice.”  
“Don't,” Asahi barks.  
“Asahi...”  
“Don't! They're young. They're-”  
“Suga was fifteen.”  
Asahi opens and shuts his mouth, lips white and thin. He's twitchy, face red.  
He draws up his shoulders. “I'll do it.”  
“I don't think that's a good idea,” Sawamura sighs and get back to his chair.  
“I'll do it!” Asahi repeats. “It should have been me all along and you know it.”  
“You can't-”  
“I'll do it,” he says, and he grabs the envelope. “Just tell me who.”  
  


 

In a place called Monster Coffee, Kawanishi slumps in his chair by the counter and rests his head on his hand. There's a concert going on across the street and he watches people file into the entrance of the concert hall.  
“Are you waiting for miss Hana?” Goshiki asks from inside the kitchen. He's standing by the fridge, peeling an apple.  
“Nah,” Kawanishi says. “That bitch broke up with me. Can you believe it?”  
“Oh, I'm very sorry to hear that,” Goshiki starts saying. And then: “Ow!”  
Kawanishi looks up. “You ok?”  
“Oh, it's nothing, I just cut my finger.”  
Goshiki runs to the tap and turns it on while Kawanishi comes up to him.  
“Lemme see.”  
“It's fine, it's just a cut.” Goshiki says.  
“I'll be the judge of that,” Kawanishi grunts, grabbing the kid's shoulder.  
“No!” Goshiki shoves him, with surprising force, and then immediately starts apologizing.  
“I'm sorry, mister Kawanishi. I'm just... It's fine.”  
Kawanishi frowns, sighs and turns around, heading into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit.  
“Fine. You coulda told me you don't like being touched, you little shit,” he says, coming back. “At least put a band-aid on. Hygiene and all that.”  
“Yes, of course. Thank you mister Kawanishi.”  
The bell tingles and Kawanishi heads off into the coffee shop while Goshiki, breathing heavily, looks at his finger. The water runs clear, pain subsiding.  
He pinches the wound. A small cut, nothing more. A thin line across his skin.  
It's not even red.  
A mild lemony smell fills the air around him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Final pun help**   
>  _Agent Orangerie: Orangerie – Agent Orange_   
>  _Sick of it Anemone, Sick of it Azalea: Anemones, Azaleas – Sick of it All_   
>  _Dahlia Kennedys: Dahlia's – Dead Kennedys_   
>  _Type Orchid Negative: Orchids – Type O Negative_
> 
>  
> 
> So hey,  
> thanks for reading the story! And congrats on making it this far. This was honestly one of the harder pieces I've written, because of the sheer.... ridiculousness of it. It was definitely a challenge that I enjoyed, and I hope you did too.  
> Let me know what you thought, and what could be better!
> 
> Lethey


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